Original news and analysis on international IP policy
In 1925, New Mexico, which gained statehood in the United States in 1912, adopted a design for its flag featuring a sun symbol belonging to the Zia peoples. According to the tribe, the symbol was secret and stolen from the Zia, who lost both ownership and control over it, and were left to contemplate the sun symbol being widely used and sometimes desecrated.
Big platform providers and small hosters alike shall be obliged to censor, according to a draft regulation presented by the European Commission in mid-September and accepted by EU member states at their Council meeting today.
Six organisations, including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, Doctors Without Borders), today appealed a European Patent Office decision to uphold Gilead Science's patent on hepatitis C drug sofosbuvir.
Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK) released a new study yesterday showing that the rheumatoid arthritis drug Enbrel has been overpatented by drugmaker Amgen, which has filed a total of 57 patents on the drug in the United States. Together, these patents were said to delay market competition by 39 years, rather than the standard 20 years for one patent. The study found that this market exclusivity for Enbrel resulted in US$ 8 billion dollars in sales in 2017 alone.
Gene editing techniques have opened the way to a new world of innovations. One of them is the potential eradication of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. What appears as a very attractive way to help with malaria eradication is denounced by civil society groups arguing that the technology is in its infancy. Wiping out entire species could have unforeseen environmental, health, and social consequences, they say. They are calling for a moratorium preventing the release of gene drive organisms in the wild. They also describe the gene drive mosquitoes as a Trojan horse, hiding broader interests of agricultural multinational corporations.
The social, humanitarian and cultural committee of the United Nations meeting this month adopted a UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. The declaration includes the right to save, exchange, and sell farm-saved seeds, a contentious issue for which small farmers have been campaigning for years.
As the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) Administrative Council meets this week, more than 60 civil society groups are calling for greater inclusion and more transparency on access to medicines and diagnostics. Signatories are asking for a review of the Harare Protocol on patents and industrial designs, and raised concern about over-reliance on advice of the United Nations intellectual property agency for decisions affecting broader public health in the region.
A key drug to treat hepatitis C has been licensed to the Medicines Patent Pool, enabling generic production and expanding affordable access to the drug in low and middle-income countries, excluding the very largest. The agreement between the Pool and AbbVie had been over a year in the making, MPP Executive Director Charles Gore told Intellectual Property Watch.
Non-profit patent researchers studying the most prominent prescription insulin drug to treat diabetes in the United States found it is “overpatented” and “overpriced,” enabling unwarranted price-hikes resulting in rising costs for patients and taxpayers.
French advocacy group La Quadrature du Net has declared recent French government plans to regulate internet hate speech insufficient, and is calling for more in-depth reforms. These could include the promotion of alternative social media platforms and a decentralised approach to regulation, according to an organisation press release.
Public Knowledge, a Washington, DC advocacy group, today released a paper calling for the formation of a new federal government authority to develop expertise and capacity on artificial intelligence (AI), to be able to effectively regulate and govern these technologies in the future.
A new report reviews how patent linkage mechanisms have been implemented in South Korea, Australia, Canada, and the United States, and identifies precedents for how low and middle-income countries (LMICs) can retain and exploit “constructive ambiguities” in trade treaty text to mitigate the impacts of patent linkage mechanisms and promote the timely availability of generic medicines.