Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The secretariat of the World Intellectual Property Organization is working this week to gain support for a proposal to get countries to better implement the UN organisation’s core revenue-generating instrument, the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). But some developing countries are wary of the proposed changes, even as the United States is calling for a new PCT.
BRUXELLES - « Le droit d’auteur devrait être aboli car il nuit à la diversité culturelle », a-t-on entendu lors d’une conférence à Bruxelles.
While rightsholders hailed a “landmark” recent high-profile verdict against the operators of Swedish online file-sharing site The Pirate Bay (TPB), legal and digital rights analysts say it was no surprise. While the law of secondary liability for copyright infringement is by no means settled everywhere, TPB’s attitude toward intellectual property protections means the same decision could have happened in other countries as well, they said.
BRUSSELS - Copyright should be abolished because it undermines cultural diversity, a Brussels conference has been told.
WASHINGTON, DC - The Patent Cooperation Treaty is not performing up to par and is not helping enough to alleviate the stress on the global patent system, World Intellectual Property Organization Director General Francis Gurry said here Tuesday. The backlog theme was echoed by judges from across the globe who said their dockets are getting fuller with IP-related cases.
When it comes to intellectual property rights enforcement, developed country rights owners and their governments continue to puzzle over how to get the rest of the world’s economies to drink from the trough now that they have brought them there. One approach that may regain interest is combining the all-out war on piracy with efforts to build greater trust in the enforcement system.
Sweeping patent reform legislation cleared a key United States Senate committee Thursday and is now headed for a vote on the Senate floor after compromises were reached on key sticking points in the bill.
LONDON—Leaders of the world’s largest economies struck a closed-door deal late Tuesday to create an international court for intellectual property litigation in a move sources said they deemed a best effort to turn back global economic demise.
Several German ministries seem to be in a footrace to draft legal text for a filtering regime blocking child pornography from German users’ personal computers agreed by the government last week.
The committee of the United States Senate drafting legislation to reform the US patent system made little progress at a meeting Thursday, according to sources, but adopted a bipartisan amendment and scheduled to reconvene next week to continue work.
In a trend appearing in other patent offices around the world, patent applications at the European Patent Office continued to rise in 2008, but at a slower rate toward the end of year. At the EPO, this was coupled with the lowest percentage of granted patents in its history.
Bennett Lincoff writes: If Choruss abandons the time-tested approach of licensing and relies instead on covenants not to sue, it will facilitate a brazen money grab by the major labels it represents, leaving songwriters, recording artists and music publishers empty-handed, and college students holding the bag.