Original news and analysis on international IP policy
An event being held in Durban, South Africa next week will bring the expertise of global and local businesses, governments, academics and others to the issues of harnessing foreign intellectual property rights as well as creating local IP rights.
Years-old efforts by members of the World Health Organization to come up with viable ways to boost research and development of medical products for diseases primarily affecting poor populations are coming to head, with a key meeting in December. That meeting of experts will be an opportunity to narrow down proposals being developed by the six WHO regional offices.
The World Intellectual Property Organization has scheduled an Extraordinary General Assembly from 10-12 December, in order to complete unfinished work from the annual WIPO General Assembly in September.
A growing list of US industries has sent a letter to the leaders of the US House of Representatives and Senate judiciary committees urging them to combat patent assertion entities (PAEs), also known as patent trolls.
United States Trade Representative Michael Froman today said that bilateral and regional agreements offer a way to get higher standards in areas such as intellectual property rights protection "into the bloodstream" of the global trading system, when it is not possible to do it through multilateral agreements.
The government of Antigua and Barbuda is said to be taking steps to set up a platform to allow the tiny Caribbean nation to monetise or otherwise take advantage of the suspension of US intellectual property rights, as it is permitted to do by a World Trade Organization dispute panel. The WTO panel had ruled that Antigua could make up its loss in IP rights for US measures blocking Antiguan online gambling in the US.
The European Parliament is showing some teeth again. Following the ongoing revelations of mass surveillance by US intelligence agencies, the Parliament plenary today passed a resolution calling on the EU Commission to temporarily suspend all data transfers according to the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) with the United States Treasury Department.
Poland’s Minister of Science and Higher Education Barbara Kudrycka has announced plans to modify Poland’s intellectual property law by providing scientists with property rights to the results of their research.
Alongside last week’s meeting of the World Trade Organization intellectual property committee, the United States, European Union and Jamaica organised an event on the relevance of intellectual property in sports. Speakers from professional organisations such as the International Olympic Committee, the Association of European Professional Football Leagues, and the Nike company were invited to share their experience in the matter.
The GAVI Alliance launched a mid-term report this week showing that the public-private partnership is on track to immunise more than 250 million children by 2015 and prevent some four million deaths. GAVI’s CEO said it uses multiple tools to help reduce prices of vaccine and that intellectual property rights do not pose a serious threat to its success.