Original news and analysis on international IP policy
By William Rava and Jason Howell, Perkins Coie Product packaging is an increasingly important marketing opportunity. Well-executed product packaging can support and strengthen your brand identity, differentiate your product on the shelf, and convey important, and often required, information to…
Applicants to the European “Innovation Communities” initiative have until 10 September to submit joint innovation proposals in the areas of healthy aging and raw materials. The aim is to create new organisations compliant with the European grant programme Horizon 2020, which will operate under flexible intellectual property rights’ policies in collaborative innovation projects.
The World Intellectual Property Organization Program and Budget Committee is meeting this week to scrutinise the UN agency’s inner workings. At the meeting, the director general’s report on programme performance gave member countries the occasion to comment on WIPO’s various…
World Intellectual Property Organization member governments are hard at work this week trying to improve auditing and oversight of the UN agency, coming after a successful year financially but a year of questions about governance and transparency. Proposed changes include a number of measures on conflicts of interest and investigations even at the highest levels of the organization.
In a longstanding World Trade Organization dispute about measures affecting the cross-border supply of gambling and betting services, Antigua and Barbuda has made a new proposal to the United States on a way to solve the issue of the US not complying with a WTO ruling it lost. And in a separate matter at the same WTO meeting last week, Cuba referred to the US failure to change a law barring a rum trademark in the context of railing against US policy of "economic suffocation" of the island nation.
The United Nations Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) has issued a substantive analysis of management and administration in the UN World Intellectual Property Organization. And while the report highlights significant progress in a number of areas, it offers a list of ways WIPO can do better – including on transparency and sorting out staff concerns and strengthening member state oversight.
The World Health Organization this week is holding its first conference on health and climate change. The major objective of the conference is to raise awareness on the impact of climate change on health, according to the WHO, which said it aims to strengthen its voice in the debate.
Faced with the worst outbreak of Ebola since its discovery some 40 years ago, the world is scrambling for treatments. A World Health Organization-convened panel of experts has decided it is ethical to use experimental treatments. Why is there no treatment available even after 40 years? Market failure, not intellectual property rights, says the WHO.
A recent paper published by the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition criticises a joint study by the European patent and trademark offices as lacking insight about the economic effects of intellectual property.
Compulsory licences should be issued to roll out generic versions of innovative HCV drugs. Only generic competition can push down the extortionate prices of these lifesaving medicines, while placing equitable access and public interest before monopolistic pharma companies’ business strategies, Daniele Dionisio argues.
Significant progress has been made in the implementation of the European regulation to establish a European unitary patent and an international treaty which sets up a unified patent court. Given the loaded agenda for the coming year, it seems that a lot of work remains to be done. Meanwhile, an ongoing proceeding before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) initiated by Spain could bring down the whole system, according to sources.
With an increase in the number of entrepreneur artisans in Uganda, a need to protect and benefit from the artisan works has emerged in the country. There is a growing trend in rights management, especially in the fields of musical works, film and art.