Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Lawrence Strickling, the United States assistant secretary of Commerce, today called on the internet community to come up with a “solid proposal” for the transition of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), from the US to a new multi-stakeholder oversight model. IANA is responsible for changes made to the internet domain name system.
The United Nations Secretary General and head of the UN International Telecommunication Union earlier this week applauded an announcement by the United States government that it plans to relinquish its remaining control over the internet domain name system.
A quantitative analysis of the 187 submissions to the April NETmundial conference on the future of internet governance shows broad support for improving security, ensuring respect for privacy, ensuring freedom of expression, and globalizing the IANA function, analyst Richard Hill writes.
This week, Jamaica tabled a proposal at the World Intellectual Property Organization for a non-binding instrument that would provide a guideline on the protection of country names against misleading trademarks for intellectual property offices and trademark practitioners. The proposal was received with interest by some member states while others, like the United States and South Africa, raised strong concerns.
The rise of knowledge societies leads to the emergence of new conflicts initiated by stakeholders who do not come from the closed world of intellectual property, but rather from the general civil society. This reflects the growing importance of IP in the international economy, says a recent book.
The UN World Intellectual Property Organization today announced its concern over the effect on trademark protection of the current launch of over 1,000 new internet domains by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
An innovative South African start-up is offering local university students a way around buying cheap pirated books with a legal print-on-demand service that slashes the price of expensive academic textbooks.
The Obama administration has announced a decision to make a last step towards completing privatisation of internet core infrastructure oversight, namely the central root zone of the domain name system. But it is not clear what this will mean for international efforts to increase intergovernmental control over the internet.
Press conferences, stakeholder meetings and presentations as well as picture-tweets about consultations have become a habit of the negotiators of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Still, after this week's round of negotiations, answers to tougher questions like what are the chances of reconciling regimes on the protection of geographic indications or data flows and data privacy seem far from clear.
The European Parliament is scheduled to vote on 3 April on amended draft legislation that would oblige pharmaceutical companies to publish all clinical trial data in a publicly accessible database.
A huge majority of the European Parliament today called for a stop to mass surveillance and a digital "New Deal" to enpower European citizens and companies following a six-month inquiry into the US National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence service surveillance programmes by the Parliamen's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.
On the eve of European Parliament's final decision on consequences from revelations of mass surveillance directed against citizens, several members of the Parliament heavily criticised EU governments for the lack of action.