Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Despite international frameworks and mechanisms to protect food security as a human right, a number of violations are committed in total impunity, according to the third edition of the "Right to Food and Nutrition Watch" issued today, this year with a focus on accountability issues.
An international private-sector network lobbying for the protection of geographical indications is set to establish a compilation of all GIs currently protected in the world in what could seem like a response to the repeated failure of governments to agree on the establishment of a GIs register at the World Trade Organization. The Organization for an International Geographical Indications Network (OriGIn), meeting for its fifth General Assembly, also voiced concerns about the lack of protection of GIs in cyberspace.
The UN agreement struck last year to bolster access and benefit-sharing related to biodiversity has been gaining signatures rapidly and may on its way to an early approval, according to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity secretariat. However, while countries are signing, not one has yet had a chance to ratify it.
While the global loss of biodiversity is widely recognised, the question of whether the influence of intellectual property rights on the protection of biodiversity is positive or negative does not achieve such consensus. A discussion among specialists on 14 September showed that clear evidence is lacking about the impact of IP rights. Some said the IP system as it stands might be ill-fitted to answer the needs of this particular field.
In recognition of the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, the secretary of the United Nations on 9 August raised the complex issue of intellectual property rights and indigenous knowledge. The Director General of the UN World Intellectual Property Organization also issued a message straddling the issue of IP rights and community ownership of traditional knowledge and resources.
Delegates working on an international instrument to protect traditional knowledge and folklore against misappropriation today agreed this afternoon to ask the World Intellectual Property Organization General Assembly in September to extend the mandate of the committee working on those issues.
Delegates at the World Intellectual Property Organization this week continued work on evolving draft texts of treaties to protect genetic resources, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions (TCEs), or folklore. But more work will be needed to complete them, according to participants.
As the mandate of the World Intellectual Property committee on the protection of genetic resources, traditional knowledge, and folklore is reaching its end, diplomats meeting this week seem to be coming to agreement on its extension. Meanwhile, a group of developing countries submitted proposals for each of the three legs of the committee, to be considered as delegates go through draft negotiating texts produced at the last session of the committee.
In the face of a severe food shortage, Kenya's Cabinet has approved imports of genetically modified maize, though it has drawn the line on use of GM maize as seeds, a regional newspaper reports.
World Intellectual Property Organization member countries next week will work on draft negotiating texts on the protection of genetic resources, traditional knowledge and folklore. New recommendations by a set of developing countries are calling for a diplomatic conference in 2013, and to extend the work of the committee in charge of reaching an international instrument, as its mandate ends this year.