Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The music industry has spent tens of millions of dollars to lobby government officials worldwide during the past decade, but whether or not the initiative has helped to shape a viable legal and commercial framework is a subject of debate.
The rapid pace of technology and dramatic shifts in the global economy will bring change to the multilateral structure set up after the Second World War, and these changes will affect the intellectual property system, World Intellectual Property Organization Director General Francis Gurry said this week.
The global patent system is intended to promote innovation and increase growth, but this might not always be the case, as it might only serve industries relying heavily on patents in advanced economies, according to a study on patents and manufacturing industries presented at the World Intellectual Property Organization this week.
What do the fearsome leader of France’s three-strikes agency, a top Microsoft counsel, Google’s copyright counsel, a free software activist, Egyptian and British librarians, a South American development-oriented academic, and a European music authors’ representative have in common? While one might be tempted to say, ‘very little’, a recent gathering showed one thing - they represent the very wide range of current views on the future of copyright licensing.
While piracy remains an oft-cited problem for the creative content industry, it is the 'Byzantine maze' of copyright law that is stalling monetisation of new business models better designed to deliver content in the digital age, panellists at the World Intellectual Property Organization said last week.
The European Commission is considering a proposal in the coming months to create a pan-European passport for collective music licensing intended to overcome stifling difficulties of 27 national collecting societies, a top official has told Intellectual Property Watch in the context of a meeting on copyright and competition.
With a standing ovation in the early hours of the morning of Saturday, in Nagoya, Japan, an international instrument aimed at preventing misappropriation of genetic resources was adopted by members of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. The protocol is also intended to ensure that benefits accrued from the use of those genetic resources are shared equitably with the provider country.
NAGOYA, JAPAN - A civil society group this week warned government officials gathered here against patents on “climate-ready” crops and what they characterised as an attempt to obtain an exclusive monopoly over plant gene sequences. The group asked states at the United Nations biodiversity conference to recognise that such patents are a threat to biodiversity and to the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilisation of genetic resources.
In a ruling expected to rock Europe’s controversial copyright levy system, the European Court of Justice held on 20 October that governments may impose fees on digital reproduction equipment to compensate rights holders only when the devices are likely to be used for private copying.
Copyright law is not always a barrier to access to knowledge, but lack of adequate or predicable copyright enforcement in developing countries can prevent the evolution of their own local creative industries, said several representatives from such industries yesterday.