Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The future of the multilateral trading system looks bleak although global trade is in good shape overall, and developing countries are becoming heavier trading partners as a new geopolitical landscape is emerging, according to panellists in a concurrent event to this week’s World Trade Organization ministerial meeting.
The World Trade Organization today wrapped up its first ministerial meeting in four years with no decisions or breakthroughs (as expected) but an informal agreement to consider by March whether members can complete the longstanding round of negotiations in 2010. Meanwhile, intellectual property issues played a tangential role in ministers’ discussions, but made several notable appearances.
Technology transfer is essential to the mitigation of climate change but empirical data on the subject is scarce, according to panellists at a parallel event to the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting. An initiative has been launched by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) to identify potential barriers to the transfer of clean technologies. Preliminary outcomes of the project were presented yesterday. One of those outcomes is a new classification scheme.
Climate change measures might impact competitiveness and the multilateral trade system in its current form might not be equipped to address the issue, according to speakers at a parallel event to the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting today. At the same time, regional trade agreements might constitute free electrons in the multilateral trade system, obeying to their own rules, said speakers at other sessions of the event.
World Trade Organization members today called for a completion of the Doha Development Round of trade liberalisation talks in 2010, tying its success to the relevance of the organisation as a whole, at the opening plenary session of this week’s WTO ministerial. Members also urged a stronger review mechanism, and the head of the World Intellectual Property Organization questioned the effectiveness of the multilateral system.
The World Trade Organization’s first full ministerial in four years is not a negotiating forum. Rather, it is bringing together some 150 trade ministers for some soul-searching on the state of the multilateral system and the work of the WTO. Measuring the event’s success (or failure, as in some past ministerials) will be difficult, but new directions may be infused into the 15-year-old organisation and a high-level political statement may be used to drive trade negotiations forward in the coming year.
NAIROBI - At the headquarters of UNITAID and other groups seeking to boost access to HIV/AIDS medicine, the notion of a patent pool where drug companies would combine their intellectual property is seen as an important way to drive down drug costs.
In the Kenyan capital Nairobi, home of AIDS activist Nelson Otwoma, the patent pool is a matter of life and death.
A United Nations group that has been hard at work laying out recommendations for how to effectively integrate intellectual property into secured financing law is heading into the final phase.
The United Nations food agency is working to strengthen a global food security committee following last week’s World Food Summit in Rome, but key observers deplored the lack of firm commitments at the gathering, while industry welcomed the mention of biotechnology in the summit declaration.
Aspects of a legally-binding international agreement on access and benefit-sharing under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity may harm business interests and also fail to reach its objectives of protecting and preserving biodiversity, said members of a panel of industry representatives in Geneva yesterday. Some also expressed doubt about the likelihood of the access and benefit sharing regime meeting its deadline of having full agreement by its October meeting next year in Nagoya, Japan.
Lors de négociations informelles tenues vendredi dernier dans la matinée, le Comité du développement et de la propriété intellectuelle semble s’être approché d’un consensus sur le mécanisme de coordination du Plan d’action pour le développement. Cependant, l’après-midi même, les gouvernements ont été incapables de surmonter les divergences qui subsistaient.
For years, the United States has taken an expansive position on the types of inventions that are patentable. Software, medical tests, and business methods - for example - have all been granted patents. But that is likely to change when the US Supreme Court hands down its decision in Bilski v. Kappos, according to most members of a 19 November panel, Patentable Subject Matter After the Bilski Oral Argument, hosted by American University Law School and the Federal Circuit Bar Association.