Original news and analysis on international IP policy
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There could be some good news in 2011 for poor populations concerned about the impact of devastating pandemic diseases. Nations last week reached some breakthroughs behind closed doors in the sensitive international negotiations on finding a way to ensure all global citizens can obtain vaccines in the face of pandemics, according to a leading official in the talks. But some observers said problems remain in establishing clear rules for fair access and benefit-sharing of viruses and vaccines.
The US organizes a sophisticated industrial policy regime by exploiting an exception in the World Trade Organization agreement that allows governments to subsidize research and development carried out by private firms, writes Professor Fred Block.
The World Intellectual Property Organization is headed in a controversial direction, and a focus on development at the expense of protection of intellectual property rights will mean the end of the agency, the United States Ambassador Betty King said yesterday.
The United States Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva this week offered a frank assessment of the UN system of dealing with pandemic diseases, and defended the need for governments to negotiate in secret to work out remaining differences.
Strategies may be failing to ensure developing countries’ implementation of global trade rules for intellectual property protection does not squelch access to affordable medicines worldwide, according to a study presented this week.
The rapid pace of technology and dramatic shifts in the global economy will bring change to the multilateral structure set up after the Second World War, and these changes will affect the intellectual property system, World Intellectual Property Organization Director General Francis Gurry said this week.
The United Nations climate change conference closed at dawn last Saturday, with a make-do package of decisions advantageously labelled the “Cancun Agreements”. Intellectual property rights have all but disappeared from the texts as Bolivia stood alone in disagreement and was shush-gavelled.
In what may be the first legal reference to newly adopted international rules on sharing the benefits of and access to genetic resources, non-governmental groups have sent letters to top European health officials reminding them of these obligations in the context of influenza viruses and access to vaccines - a topic under debate this week at the World Health Organization.
As delegates in Cancun, Mexico, neared the end of their search this week for consensus on how to stop climate change, intellectual property issues were being set aside for later.
The proposed European Union-India free trade agreement was one of the top issues at the 11th EU-India Summit held in Brussels today. But two sides of the story are being told about who will benefit or lose.
What would happen if the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) received an application for a .wikileaks top level domain name (TLD) next year, under its new system of opening up the internet for domains? It could make an interesting example of how well the complex system to apply for new TLDs works and how much political intervention is possible in the system. At the 39th ICANN meeting in Cartagena, Colombia this week, the self-regulatory body is trying to finalise issues in the published Final Applicant Guidebook - and it is governments and trademark owners that are calling for more time and more procedures.