Report: FAO To The Rescue In Global Agriculture And Trade Discussions
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization yesterday launched a report aiming at helping the current divide on the issue of trade and food security.
Intellectual Property Watch
Original news and analysis on international IP policy
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European Court Of Human Rights Finds Turkey Violated Freedom Of Expression In YouTube Blocking
Ten sites allegedly disrespectful to Kemal Attaturk, founder of modern Turkey, were enough for the courts in Turkey to ban a whole platform - YouTube - from 2008 until the end of 2010. But a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights today declared the blanket blocking a violation of the right to receive and impart information freely, protected under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Medicines Patent Pool Partners with Liverpool University On HIV Nanomedicines
The Medicines Patent Pool has signed a collaborative agreement with the University of Liverpool to develop HIV nanomedicines.
New Industry Coalition To Promote Fair Standards In Licensing
A group of companies launched the Fair Standards Alliance this week in Brussels, aimed at ensuring licensing of standard-essential patents is done on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. This reflects an industry trend toward clarifying the meaning of FRAND to help boost use of patents included in standards.
New Internet Domain Reservations: There Can Only Be One – Or Not?
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), standardisation body for the internet protocol and related specifications, is concerned about stepping on the toes of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) with a potentially growing number of requests for new top-level domain (TLD) reservations arriving at its doorstep. The recent reservation of a special name space .onion for the Tor anonymization network resulted in a big debate at last week’s meeting of the IETF Domain Name Operations Working Group (DNSOP WG) in Yokohama, Japan. The debate was over how to preserve clear boundaries between DNS politics and the IETF technical standardisation.
New WIPO Group B Coordinator; MPP Adds Members To Board
October saw a flurry of changes in law offices in the United States. In Geneva, the coordination for Group B developed countries at the World Intellectual Property Organization changed hands, and the Medicines Patent Pool added four members to its Governance Board.
Plant Treaty Budget, Work Programme Approved; Farmers Concerned
The treaty on plant genetic resources held its governing body meeting earlier this month with new initiatives to bring financial sustainability to the treaty, in particular to study the possibility of a subscription system to access the treaty’s plant genetic materials. Also, the Governing Body approved the first work programme of a global information system, which includes an initiative to enhance the use of gene bank materials, to the dismay of farmers’ organisations.