Original news and analysis on international IP policy
By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch The United States government does not want to retain “all [its] historic roles” in the technical oversight of the Internet domain name system (DNS), a senior Bush administration official said this week. But…
An intergovernmental working group on public health and intellectual property, which the World Health Assembly said in May should be set up “immediately,” is scheduled to meet for the first time in December in Geneva, according to informed sources. But…
After some five years of negotiations, the World Trade Organization (WTO) free-trade talks were halted today as ministers of key countries left the negotiating table. But key intellectual property issues will be kept on the table for whenever they return,…
This week’s Group of Eight (G8) meeting in Saint Petersburg, Russia highlighted piracy and counterfeiting as one area in which G8 is determined to step up its effort, but it also made commitments to improve access to medicines for infectious…
By Dugie Standeford for Intellectual Property Watch The United Kingdom independent music sector wants content distributors to pay creators for transmitting their works over the Internet, mobile phones and other devices. At a 12 July London roundtable headed by the…
BRUSSELS – The European Commission today fined Microsoft €280.5 million ($356.35 million) for failing to comply with a 2004 Commission request to provide documents that would make it easier for other companies to develop products that would be interoperable with…
By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch Procedural questions could kill a proposed European Union directive aimed at fighting theft of products, patents and copyrights, after the Dutch Parliament raised jurisdictional objections last week. At issue is the planned EU…
By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch Should everybody who registers an Internet domain name be forced to publish his private address, email address and phone number on the Internet? A storm broke out over the question of the so-called…
A monopoly by a single pharmaceutical company on a new medicine for HIV/AIDS has limited access to the medicine to a select group of patients in developing countries, a non-profit group said today. The product is lopinavir/ritonavir (Kaletra) and is…
With eight recently confirmed cases of avian influenza, Indonesia is scrambling to build up its stockpile of medicines. The preferred product to fight bird flu in humans is not under patent in Indonesia, which raises questions as to why production…