Original news and analysis on international IP policy
INTERGOVERNMENTAL COMMITTEE ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND GENETIC RESOURCES, TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND FOLKLORE (IGC) Background The IGC is an ad hoc body with a renewable two-year mandate. Since its establishment in 2000, the IGC has worked towards international legal instrument(s) ensuring…
European Union member states today agreed to accede to an agreement negotiated under the World Intellectual Property Organization that raises protections for geographical indications, products whose names derive from a particular regions with certain characteristics. Joining the so-called Geneva Act establishes a GI register for agricultural and non-agricultural products and appears to have the effect of requiring EU members to protect registered GIs of other members.
Chris Holly is a practicing intellectual property lawyer with extensive experience helping clients leverage IP portfolios in the agriculture, food, microbiology and biotechnology industries. Intellectual Property Watch's David Branigan interviewed Holly to gain his perspective on the technological, regulatory and intellectual property considerations of next generation plant breeding techniques, in particular those that involve gene editing using CRISPR technology.
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade agreement under negotiation among Asia and Pacific nations must not include measures that would undercut countries' ability to protect diverse local farming systems and sustainable plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, a range of Asian nongovernmental organisations argue. Groups in India, Malaysia and the Philippines this week specifically called for the RCEP not to include the high-level protections under the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV).
After weeklong negotiations on potential treaty language defining traditional knowledge and folklore, how they would be protected, and under which conditions, World Intellectual Property Organization member states agreed on draft articles, qualified as a work in progress by the committee chair.
This week's first revisions of draft articles of potential treaties protecting traditional knowledge, and folklore were released midweek at the World Intellectual Property Organization. Changes included new elements on a tiered approach in the protection of traditional knowledge, whether it is restricted, narrowly diffused, or widely diffused.
As this week opened with a meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organization committee working on the protection of genetic resources and traditional knowledge, a new book was released that looks into indigenous rights and indigenous intellectual property, in the context of the Paris Agreement. The book also looks into Tesla’s open innovation strategy.
In 1925, New Mexico, which gained statehood in the United States in 1912, adopted a design for its flag featuring a sun symbol belonging to the Zia peoples. According to the tribe, the symbol was secret and stolen from the Zia, who lost both ownership and control over it, and were left to contemplate the sun symbol being widely used and sometimes desecrated.
The ways to protect traditional knowledge and folklore against misuse and misappropriation are under discussion this week at the World Intellectual Property Organization. Member states are trying to find consensus on draft articles of a potential treaty, with a focus on core subjects, such as the scope of protection, and definition. Meanwhile, the fund which allows indigenous peoples to participate in the discussion is depleted, as calls for contributions have remained unanswered and some countries have refused in the past to allow WIPO's ample revenues to pay for them.
An agriculture committee of the European Council today adopted an agreement on labelling of spirit drinks, giving them higher protection by adding seven years to the World Trade Organization minimum intellectual property standard.
The biennial meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity and its protocol on access and benefit-sharing closed yesterday with a list of adopted decisions. Among them was a decision to commission several studies on the impact of digital sequence data on the CBD for a recommendation at the next meeting in 2020. Delegates also agreed on a study to examine cases of genetic resources, and traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources, not yet covered by the protocol. Also adopted is the first decision on the management and prevention of conflicts of interest in expert groups.
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt -- UN Convention on Biological Diversity members were trying this week to address questions that were left open when its protocol on access and benefit-sharing was adopted eight years ago. One of them is how to deal with genetic resources which are not yet covered by the protocol. A side event to the biennial conference of CBD members this week presented a solution, which they say could provide a more efficient, cost-effective and fairer system of access and benefit-sharing, based on inventions protected by intellectual property rights.