Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The traditional copyright system’s balance for encouraging yet controlling access to copyrighted works in order to extract value for them has met with a destructive force in the internet that it cannot overcome without changing itself, the head of the World Intellectual Property Organization said recently in a landmark speech. And he proposed several elements for the way forward.
The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture is holding the fourth regular session of its Governing Body this week in Bali, Indonesia.
In a flurry of patent-related developments in Europe this week, plans for a single European patent moved a step closer, efforts to create a European-wide patent court faltered, the United Kingdom sought guidance in a case with implications for medicinal research, and the EU high court may be asked to review the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).
In a significant development for ongoing copyright negotiations at the World Intellectual Property Organization, the World Blind Union has distanced itself from initiatives it sees as distractions from a primary goal at the international level: To get agreement on a treaty promoting better access to reading material for visually impaired readers.
The newly created Medicines Patent Pool promises to increase access to HIV/AIDS medications in developing markets. Based in Geneva, Switzerland, the pool operates a scheme in which pharmaceutical patent holders voluntarily licence their drugs to generic manufacturers who then produce more affordable versions for patients in poorer countries
The annual report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, to the sixteenth session of the UN Human Rights Council yesterday is unequivocal. There must be a global agricultural shift toward more productive, environmentally friendly, sustainable modes of production, using natural resources to remediate world hunger, away from industrialised agriculture. In short, the world needs a shift to agroecology.
The new international agreement on access and benefit-sharing of genetic resources has many IP implications, according to panellists at an event last week. And at least one United Nations agency is launching an effort to help countries with those IP implications.
Country experts this week took up the challenge of doing the groundwork for negotiations towards a treaty on the protection of genetic resources at the World Intellectual Property Organization. Breaking uncharacteristically early on the final day today, the experts’ work delivered a set of options reflecting all points of views for negotiators to work from.
A new draft document was issued yesterday by a drafting group of experts at the World Intellectual Property Organization. The drafting group was in charge of cleaning up a text with aspirations to become a draft international instrument on the protection of genetic resources, and added a number of options for a possible treaty.
Myriad Genetics, a United States-based biotechnology company with exclusive patent rights over a key breast cancer diagnostic test in the US, may shift its patent strategy from its inventions to protecting its data in the face of drawn out litigation and upcoming competition, an industry journal has reported.
The role of the World Health Organization in the safety, quality and efficacy of medical products is under scrutiny this week by member states and stakeholders. In particular, the focus is on the WHO’s role in the prevention and control of medical products of compromised quality, the organisation’s relationship with the international taskforce against counterfeit products, and the taskforce’s alleged focus on the protection of intellectual property rights rather than on public health issues. In several documents, the WHO tries to explain this fragile role.
Experts discussing the protection of genetic resources at the World Intellectual Property Organization this week are struggling to stay within their technical mandate as the issues carry significant political impact. Discussions today resulted in a marked-up text on objectives and principles of a possible international instrument that reveals key differences among members on the role of IP, and of WIPO, in genetic resources.