Original news and analysis on international IP policy
A new pharmaceutical industry-backed study draws attention to the value of innovative medicines in reducing healthcare costs and to the wider society that goes beyond clinical and personal values. However, in middle income countries, national prioritisation and improvements in healthcare infrastructure are needed to maximise the value of medicinal innovation, the study found.
Discussions on access to essential medicines yesterday at the World Health Organization were in some ways overshadowed by the recent leak of a global pharmaceutical campaign aimed at derailing efforts by the South African government to revise its intellectual property policy. WHO Director General Margaret Chan strongly supported South Africa, as did several developing countries, while developed countries remained silent on the subject.
The World Health Organization Executive Board spent long hours this week discussing the progress of the reform of the organisation. Among items covered were the reform implementation plan, the engagement of WHO with non-state actors, and ways to improve decision-making by the organisation’s governing bodies.
Several health care organisations this week signed a “consensus framework" for ethical collaboration between patients’ organisations, healthcare professionals, and the pharmaceutical industry.
A 12-year-old World Health Organization programme for prequalifying medical products has helped international organisations and others to safely purchase billions of US dollars' worth of quality medicines per year, but now is at risk due to funding shortages, a new study released today found.
Just weeks before being abruptly arrested and strip-searched in New York, a now-departed Indian diplomat took on the powerful US business lobby over India’s controversial approach to intellectual property.
Looking back on 2013, the list of the most-viewed stories on the Intellectual Property Watch website shows that reporting on activities in India, especially related to patents and public health, continued to draw the most attention. Other top stories were the Marrakesh Treaty on copyright exceptions for blind readers, legal cases involving patents on seeds and on plant and human genes, the election for World Intellectual Property Organization director general, free-trade agreements (including the Wikileaks leak of the IP chapter of the Trans-Atlantic Partnership agreement), Russian copyrights, and 3D printing.
More than 250 academics from around the world have signed a declaration strongly calling for a stop to surveillance of citizens' communications online by US and European authorities. And in December, more than 500 top authors joined a coalition called Writers against Mass Surveillance calling for international rules to curb wholesale surveillance.
A recent conference on intellectual property and the public interest concluded with the adoption of public interest principles to guide international trade negotiations and international organisations.
As World Intellectual Property Organization member states launched into discussions on exceptions and limitations to copyright for the benefit of libraries and archives this week, non-governmental organisations were given the opportunity to present their views on the issue. They delivered vibrant, sometimes contradictory, statements on the opportunity for a treaty to preserve exceptions in the international copyright system.