Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The World Health Organization announced today that a vaccine preventing Ebola has proved efficacious in Ebola-stricken Guinea, hailing it as a "turning point in the history of health R&D."
The Medicines Patent Pool in Geneva is celebrating five years of existence this month. MPP Executive Director Greg Perry sat down with Intellectual Property Watch Catherine Saez to describe progress made since its inception, the success of its licensing agreement model, and plans for the future, including a possible extension to other diseases such as tuberculosis and hepatitis C.
The UN World Intellectual Property Organization is a member-driven agency set up to protect IP rights worldwide. In recent years, an area of dissension and debate has been how to make the organisation – and IPRs - friendlier to developing countries. This year, however, it has become a hotspot for the global debate between developed countries over protection of geographical indications, products of distinctive character deriving from specific locations.
The World Intellectual Property Organization provides legislative assistance to developing countries and least-developed countries upon request by individual member states. This week at the WIPO patent law committee, the Latin American and Caribbean Group tabled a proposal to revise the 1979 WIPO model law for developing countries on inventions, arguing it is obsolete.
After a slow start this week due to late approval of the agenda, the World Intellectual Property Organization patent law committee is now sailing through the proposed schedule. However, previous positions remain unchanged and the core issue of the session is to find common ground on the future work of the committee.
“IP is a very crucial part of our business and I can’t imagine being in biotech without a very strong emphasis on intellectual property,” a biotech industry executive said during a panel organised at the World Intellectual Property Organization yesterday.
The publication for public comment of the much-anticipated South African draft Copyright Amendment Bill has cautiously been welcomed by some stakeholders, who believe that parts of the draft are unworkable.
James Love writes: This week negotiators from a dozen countries are meeting to finalize the rules for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. When or if concluded, this massive regional trade agreement will set new standards for the grant of property rights in knowledge, and the enforcement of those rights.
The TPP chapter on intellectual property covers all intellectual property types included in Part II of the WTO's TRIPS agreement, plus some others, including not only patents, copyrights and trademarks, but also "undisclosed information", test data for the registration of drugs, industrial designs, layout-designs of integrated circuits. The rules in the TPP are intended by the United States to become global norms, effectively replacing TRIPS.
While there are plenty of issues in the TPP IP Chapter, this note only addresses one set of issues -- those relating to the remedies for the infringement of intellectual property rights. The remedies include such topics as injunctions, damages, and the seizure or destruction of infringing goods.
It may be an open access initiative, but Ukrainian writers and authors are on the verge of massive protests, due to a recent initiative of the Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) to conduct digitalisation and online publishing of all of the books and documents stored in the national archives and libraries.
“Membership is comfortable with the level of preparedness and what we have done as a country” to host the December trade ministerial, the Kenyan trade minister told press at the World Trade Organization today.
The World Intellectual Property Organization committee on the law of patents got a slow start this morning as delegates did not agree on the draft agenda submitted by the secretariat for this session. After informal consultations during the morning, WIPO members accepted a draft revised agenda proposed by the committee chair.
Trade ministers negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement meet this week in Maui, Hawaii to try to finish the deal. Along with them are numerous public interest groups strenuously lobbying to steer the deal away from single-minded corporate interest.