Original news and analysis on international IP policy
NAGOYA, JAPAN - In weekend attire, delegates in charge of negotiating an international binding instrument protecting countries against misappropriation of their genetic resources arrived at Nagoya Congress Center on Saturday afternoon to take up a new draft text with a day and a half to solve remaining issues.
NAGOYA, JAPAN – Officials negotiating this week on an international agreement to stop misuse of genetic resources appear to have reached minimal consensus on additional articles of the draft text under negotiation, though many specific areas of disagreement were resolved, they said. A Friday deadline for completion was pushed to Monday in the hope they can resolve deeper differences on fundamental issues such as traditional knowledge and compliance.
NAGOYA, JAPAN - With the clock ticking and less than a day to go before a draft of a legally binding instrument to prevent biopiracy is due to be presented to the assembly of a major United Nations meeting on biodiversity, delegations kept trying to find acceptable language, with different echoes coming from the negotiating room. Meanwhile, Canadian indigenous people convened a press briefing today (21 October) to charge that Canada was trying to block the negotiations and deny their human rights.
NAGOYA, JAPAN - Negotiations on a legal international instrument to prevent biopiracy and ensure that resource holders are compensated on Thursday continued to demand the attention of delegates in the closed-door discussions here. Meanwhile, civil society argued that the Convention on Biological Diversity is at a critical point while a research institute provided a model agreement for providers and users of genetic resources.
The agenda has been circulated for the upcoming annual World Trade Organization review of an amendment to international IP trade law that has so far failed to increase access to needed medicines for the poorest economies. It shows a deeper look at existing measures and opens the possibility of new solutions to the issue.
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A leading indigenous negotiator for a UN protocol on biodiversity access and benefit sharing says the process will likely yield a highly diluted, rights-poor protocol and that Indigenous Peoples' negotiating leverage is slipping.
Can the digital environment be used in a way that promotes real human rights? A group of activists speaking yesterday alongside the ongoing UN Human Rights Council believes that it can, and provided several examples of work they are doing to make that happen.
Five years after the tale began in Athens, the United Nations Internet Governance Forum returned to Europe last week to ask itself what has been achieved. The answer was encouraging enough to prompt a range of internet stakeholders to suggest continuation of the group, this time with a greater focus on concrete outcomes.
Copyright and patent laws "are often misused" for reasons that have "more to do with limiting competition and preventing consumers from making innovative uses of their products" than they do with stopping piracy, global consumer advocacy group Consumers International plans to tell a UN internet meeting today. Such misuse includes limitations on the use of third-party content on devices such as the iPhone, and regional codes that prevent consumers from playing DVDs bought legally abroad in a consumer's home country.
Some African nations signed a protocol on the protection of traditional knowledge and folklore at the beginning of August gaining the praise of the World Intellectual Property Organization. However, a United Nations report launched in January warned against the application of western legal and economic principles to collectively owned knowledge in traditional communities.
A group of policymakers and other experts met this month in Geneva to discuss counterfeit and unsafe products and wrestled with possible balanced solutions to the problem. The event was hosted by the United States mission and supported by the US Chamber of Commerce. It included US Ambassador to the UN Betty E. King, among dozens of others.