Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Developed country pharmaceutical companies today announced their support for an extension of the deadline for poor countries to comply with a global trade agreement on intellectual property rights that would significantly raise their obligations to protect IP. The extension idea has been proposed by the United Kingdom government in a new trade strategy document.
PARIS - The recently agreed international instrument to facilitate access to genetic resources and the equitable sharing of benefits accrued from those resources opened for signature last week, and the text is already getting mixed reviews from stakeholders.
Four developing countries have signed a recently completed international agreement on access to genetic resources and the fair retribution of benefits accrued from those resources. The protocol opened for signature in New York last week and efforts are underway to set up an information clearinghouse.
World Health Organization members yesterday struck a compromise allowing a Swiss industry representative to sit on a committee selecting proposals for research and developing financing for neglected diseases, disregarding the fact that he is author of one of the proposals. Special safeguards were added to prevent undue influence, but questions remain for some about a conflict of interest.
A seemingly overworked and impoverished World Health Organization opened its Executive Board session today with calls for reform amid deep concerns about its financial future. Meanwhile, dissension arose over an industry representative named by the WHO secretariat to a new research and development funding working group, sparking the WHO director general to cast doubt on the role of industry in such groups.
A panoramic view of the IP situation in the Caribbean would present to the observer a carnival of Olympic size replete with politicians, diplomats, rights advocates, consumer groups, law enforcement, and impotent jurists, all gyrating discordantly to the WIPO band while Caribbean citizens look on, or are pulled or shoved in, writes Abiola Inniss.
A decision by the Indian Patent Office to reject a patent on an AIDS drug last week has drawn acclaim from civil society and Indian generic pharmaceutical industries. The decision was not based on a controversial article of Indian law aimed at preventing patent extensions but rather on the grounds of non-inventiveness. Abbott Laboratories, meanwhile, presented Intellectual Property Watch with justification for its Indian patent request.
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There could be some good news in 2011 for poor populations concerned about the impact of devastating pandemic diseases. Nations last week reached some breakthroughs behind closed doors in the sensitive international negotiations on finding a way to ensure all global citizens can obtain vaccines in the face of pandemics, according to a leading official in the talks. But some observers said problems remain in establishing clear rules for fair access and benefit-sharing of viruses and vaccines.
The US organizes a sophisticated industrial policy regime by exploiting an exception in the World Trade Organization agreement that allows governments to subsidize research and development carried out by private firms, writes Professor Fred Block.
The World Intellectual Property Organization is headed in a controversial direction, and a focus on development at the expense of protection of intellectual property rights will mean the end of the agency, the United States Ambassador Betty King said yesterday.
The United States Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva this week offered a frank assessment of the UN system of dealing with pandemic diseases, and defended the need for governments to negotiate in secret to work out remaining differences.