Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The Access and Benefit Sharing Capacity Development Initiative (ABS Initiative) and the World Intellectual Property Organization will continue their cooperation and produce “further good events,” it became known during a recent event organised by WIPO. The initiative relates to genetic resources.
Can the farmer seed system most widely used in the world, and the system of seeds produced by plant breeders certified and protected by intellectual property rights, be complementary? The question was addressed during a recent webinar organised by the Global Forum on Agricultural Research, with no easy answers. In particular, speakers mentioned several challenges, including the lack of a common agreement on what are farmers' rights, and the inability for small farmers to register their seeds so they are protected, in particular against biopiracy.
The United Nations Human Rights Council today adopted a resolution on the right to health in relation to the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including a call for medicines and vaccines access for all. The resolution also requested the UN human rights commissioner to report on the right to health.
There are still many unanswered questions about intellectual property rights, speakers said during an academic conference last week in Geneva. Think tank analyst and author Pedro Roffe, who was the focal point of the conference, said at the event that there is “particularly in Geneva” place for dialogue about “very important and emerging” IP questions.
The World Health Organization announced yesterday that it has begun work on a list of essential diagnostics, as an echo of its Model List of Essential Medicines.
"Political and economic pressure placed on governments to forgo the use of TRIPS flexibilities violates the integrity and legitimacy of the system of legal duties and rights created by the TRIPS agreement and as reaffirmed by the Doha Declaration," India told a World Trade Organization committee this week, referring to the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).
Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands, the United States and the United Kingdom are the top five global innovative economies, according to the Global Innovation Index 2017, released today.
Designing a world where humans have to share space with robots is not an easy task. Several initiatives are looking at ways to address issues linked to the main fuel of artificial intelligence: data. Such issues include privacy, data ownership and sharing, but also making sure that artificial intelligence will not widen the existing digital divide. Speakers at a global summit last week provided insight on ongoing efforts to understand and best tackle the inevitable and sometimes unforeseen problems of this new territory.
Artificial intelligence can solve many challenges facing humanity and it is seen playing a contributing role to the achieving of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but being data-driven, the inevitable question that arises is who owns it and manages it.
Entrepreneurs with innovative water technologies came to the World Intellectual Property Organization last week to find new partnerships and investors. The urgent need to work together and build partnerships in the water sector was the overall message of the event. “Nobody can do the work alone,” Nicholas Niggli, Republic & State of Geneva's Director General, Economic Development, Research & Innovation, said, referring to the many existing water challenges.
Earlier this year, the Nepal Government released its long-awaited first national intellectual property policy, after becoming the first least developed country (LDC) to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) on 23 April 2004.
Frederick M. Abbott writes: The US Supreme Court has created a new competitive landscape with its decision adopting international exhaustion of patents. For the pharmaceutical sector, we can expect an initial period of uncertainty as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) assesses the regulatory framework affected by the decision and as competing stakeholders advance their interests. In an earlier Inside Views contribution, I addressed the principal impact of the decision on the US pharmaceuticals market: downward pricing pressure.[1] This follow-on addresses some of the regulatory and access issues affected by the decision, observing that parallel trade in pharmaceutical products is a long-standing practice, that recently introduced US legislative proposals may shape the regulatory framework in the United States, and concluding with ways that access programs in favor of developing countries are protected.