Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The European Commission today published a strategy intended to boost the economy by analysing and applying polish to European Union rules on intellectual property rights, including increased attention to enforcement with a crackdown on small shipments from internet purchases.
Betty King, United States Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, has declared US support for a multilateral system of internet governance and an open internet.
Country delegates gathered Saturday at the World Health Assembly decided to give another year to a working group in charge of making recommendations on falsified medicines. Unanimously, countries decided that more time is needed to reach consensual recommendations, in particular on the prickly issue of intellectual property rights.
China's violations of United States intellectual property rights costs the US tens of billions of dollars in economic activity and millions of jobs, according to a report released today from the US International Trade Commission.
Intellectual property rights holders, access to knowledge proponents, presumably online scam artists, and possibly governments and international organisations interested in internet governance heard the call of the introduction this week of the “Protect IP Act” in the US Senate. The bill is aimed at strengthening US law enforcement’s ability to stop international websites offering counterfeit goods or unauthorised copyrighted content.
The European Commission recently signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at boosting cooperation between rights holders and internet platforms in the fight against counterfeit products sold online.
Colonial history says that indigenous peoples were in the past sometimes asked to sign treaties that may not have been in their best interest or that were not honoured. Now, under the aegis of the United Nations, some indigenous peoples fear it may be happening again, only this time they are fighting to be at the table as the subject is their traditional practices, and the outcome would apply on a global scale.
World Intellectual Property Organization members this week set the stage for text-based negotiations for an international instrument on the protection of traditional knowledge, folklore and genetic resources.
The protection of genetic resources from misappropriation, institutionalised in October 2010 by the Nagoya Protocol, is getting nearer to realisation as eight new countries ratified the protocol yesterday.
Although indigenous peoples’ rights are recognised in a number of international declarations, the implementation of those rights is difficult to achieve, according to panellists at an event opening this week’s World Intellectual Property Organization negotiations toward a treaty to protect traditional knowledge, folklore and genetic resources.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is open for interpretation, perhaps too much so, legal experts on both sites of the Atlantic are warning.
Developing countries are not taking advantage of discoveries made by their scientists and researchers because they lack an appropriate intellectual property infrastructure and expertise, according to a long-time United States proponent of IP rights speaking in Geneva last week. He called for development funds to be redirected to address these shortcomings rather than only supporting IP enforcement initiatives.