Original news and analysis on international IP policy
An outside meeting of experts has prepared a report ahead of this month’s gathering of World Health Organization members hoping to agree on new models for financing research and development for diseases lacking adequate market mechanisms and public policies. These include neglected diseases that predominantly affect poor populations unable to pay high prices needed to defray R&D costs under the existing commercial model.
Members of the World Trade Organization intellectual property rights committee today launched their first-ever debate on IP and innovation. In addition, least developed countries formally requested an extension of their transition period to enforce WTO rules on IPRs.
The text of the Draft Statute of the proposed Pan-African Intellectual Property Organization does not support a clear basis for criticism, but the lack of a clear need to put resources toward a centralised African registration system, and the lack of transparency about the process signal that the idea is "ill-conceived," writes South African lawyer Sadulla Karjiker.
The World Trade Organization member committee on the WTO intellectual property agreement meets tomorrow, with a new agenda item on intellectual property and innovation at the request of the United States and Brazil.
A group of countries working to expand the World Trade Organization Information Technology Agreement (ITA) showed progress this week, but some continued to have reservations, the WTO reported.
South-South trade and investment is growing and could lead to greater technology sharing but some countries are left out, particularly least developed countries, due to lack of technological capacity, according to a new United Nations report that also looked at intellectual property in the context of the rising South-South collaboration. Separately, UNCTAD also has begun consultations on joint work with the World Intellectual Property Organization.
This week, members of a consortium sponsored by the World Intellectual Property Organization to facilitate research in neglected diseases celebrated the first anniversary of the initiative and claimed an expanding membership and several research collaborations or agreements.
A new petition circulating worldwide urges the delay of a suddenly fast-moving proposal to create a Pan-African Intellectual Property Organization (PAIPO). The delay effort – which seeks an open discussion of the proposal to make it more tailored to local African needs - comes just weeks before African Union representatives meet to consider its adoption.
At last week's high-level meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) governments agreed to double financial flows toward biodiversity by 2015, the CBD has announced. They also came up with strategy to move forward on access and benefit-sharing of biodiversity.
After three days of mostly informal discussions and a set of succeeding draft texts of what could become a treaty for visually impaired persons, World Intellectual Property Organization members tonight closed discussions with yet another version of the text showing agreement in some areas and work still to be done.
In a move that goes beyond territorial disputes and past atrocities, the Republic of Korea this week hosted a training session for Chinese civil servants on protection of intellectual property rights.
Sustainable agriculture needs a new paradigm in the face of the growing global population, away from the "more production" orientation, says a new study published by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA).