Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Trade ministers negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement meet this week in Maui, Hawaii to try to finish the deal. Along with them are numerous public interest groups strenuously lobbying to steer the deal away from single-minded corporate interest.
The World Intellectual Property Organization Program and Budget Committee (PBC) last week took note of WIPO’s mostly positive 2014 progress report, walked through its proposed program and budget for 2016-2017, and addressed issues of investment, governance, new external offices, and development. Many issues will be carried forward to the next PBC meeting in mid-September, just prior to the annual WIPO General Assembly.
Third World Network reports: New Delhi, 20 July (K M Gopakumar) – Member States of the World Health Organization have decided to continue the negotiations on a Framework of Engagement with Non-State Actors (FENSA) as several key issues remain unresolved.
Inter partes review (“IPR”) proceedings were originally intended to allow defendants in patent infringement lawsuits to invalidate questionable patents cheaply and quickly. But these proceedings increasingly are being used by parties that are not defendants in active litigation matters at all, write Rich Hung and Alex Hadduck.
In 1976, Yambuku village school headmaster Mabalo Lokela felt sick when he returned from a trip to northern Zaire near the Central African Republic border. He had a high fever, diarrhea, and bleeding. Because he was initially believed to have malaria, Lokela was given quinine, but his symptoms got worse and he soon died. Shortly afterwards, those who had been in contact with Lokela also died. ... Almost four decades later, there is still no cure for Ebola, despite the fact that drug development on average takes about a third of this time frame, write William Fisher and Quentin Palfrey.
The World Intellectual Property Organization Program and Budget Committee (PBC) is meeting this week with a full agenda of issues relating to planning for the next biennium as well as management matters.
John Hornick writes: Although legal principles apply to 3D printing the same as they apply to any other technology, 3D printing has the unique potential to upset the legal status quo. It is the potential scale of 3D printing that may have profound effects on the law. 3D printing cuts across many areas of law, most types of technology, and almost all types of products. Eventually, anyone may be able to make almost anything. No one else will know they made it or be able to control it, which I call 3D printing away from control.
Economics be damned. So said the US Supreme Court on 22 June, when it reaffirmed a 50 year-old ruling that limits how patent owners can license their patents. The court conceded the limit does not make economic sense, but asserted that patent law has its own logic. That could change many aspects of patent law, according to experts.
With the veil of secrecy lifted a little more on the strictly secret talks of the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) after Wikileaks published large chunks of negotiating text, delegations gathered for negotiations of the trade deal this week in Geneva face some noisy opposition.
A collaboration between the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and leading information and telecommunications technology companies has entered a new phase in dealing with challenges in IT infrastructures. This new phase also marks the inclusion of public research organisations in the collaboration. Separately, the program director discussed the role of intellectual property rights at the lab.