Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The World Intellectual Property Organization is currently engaged in an unprecedented process for the selection of the new top management team to serve under recently re-elected Director General Francis Gurry. The open call for applicants resulted in some 360 applications from around the world, including from the upper echelons of WIPO itself, according to sources.
The International Seed Treaty held a celebratory high-level event recently to mark the tenth anniversary of its entry into force.
Members of the World Trade Organization today opened negotiations on the liberalisation of environmental technologies or "green goods."
A group of African civil society institutions is calling for a revision of the draft protocol on plant variety protection of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation.
An amendment to elevate the status of geographical indications at the World Intellectual Property Organization appears to be on track for a high-level final negotiation in 2015 after a meeting last week.
A corporate sustainability-centred model of governance is the subject of a new report issued by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Finance Initiative, a UN-private sector initiative.
A new report commissioned by the World Intellectual Property Organization shows a huge increase in patent filings related to renewable energy technologies relative averages. The patent landscape in this area indicates that innovation is taking place across a greater geographical scope, and is shifting towards the global East. The report, presented this week, opens up questions for policymakers, and for further research regarding drivers for these trends and other measures of innovation.
Whether countries can bring intellectual property complaints against each other under the World Trade Organization even if they don’t violate WTO rules was a topic of debate this week, but could not be resolved.
In a country with over 35 million people, Uganda’s economy is based on agriculture. Over 80 percent of the country’s workforce is employed in the sector, contributing up to 23 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
Governments must assert the human right to health and take action against the massive rise in obesity globally, brought about by the widespread availability and pervasive marketing of unhealthy “junk” foods, Anand Grover, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health, urged today.