Original news and analysis on international IP policy
An informal meeting of World Trade Organization members on a long-discussed register on geographical indications of wines and spirits today showed that member states were committed but not yet inclined to delve into the issues until they have a clearer picture of other sensitive topics of the Doha Round.
The author of a World Intellectual Property Organization-commissioned study said this week that WIPO should take the lead on the issue of limitations and exceptions to copyright for libraries, before the debate and the solution are left to other actors.
China has been filing patents at far greater rates than any other nation on earth in recent years. This week, a Thomson Reuters report broke down that growth and compared it with other leading nations on the basis of innovation.
As staff strikes continue and the European Patent Office's Administrative Council prepares for what could be a contentious 11 December meeting, opinions are split over the effect of the turmoil on the office's role in Europe's unitary patent.
There is an uptick in India-United States relations. US President Barack Obama will be in India in January as the chief guest at the country’s Republic Day Parade. Obama, who hosted India’s new Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington in September, will become the first US president to attend such a celebration, a display of India’s military might and ethnic diversity, as well as the first to visit India twice while in office.
The 29th Session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights at the World Intellectual Property Organization is currently underway. On the agenda, inter alia, will be discussions on Limitations and Exceptions to Libraries, Archives and Educational, Teaching and Research Institutions. Against the backdrop of the success with the Marrakesh Treaty, the trajectory looks set for these further exceptions and limitations to succeed.
World Intellectual Property Organization members have been working in relative secrecy this week to decide how far to apply intellectual property rights protections on broadcasts. To guide them, nongovernmental organisations offered a range of views, from sweeping protections to scaling back the proposed treaty.
The Vienna-based United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has been working for several years to fight “fraudulent” medicines in the global supply chain. But an alleged new draft model legislation it is developing includes intellectual property rights, an issue which has led to intensive debates in other international fora. This week, a closed-door UNODC informal expert group drafting the model legislation is meeting in Vienna.
After two difficult meetings, the World Intellectual Property Organization copyright committee is meeting this week with the hope of getting closer to a treaty protecting broadcasting organisations, although questions remain on scope and level of protection. The committee is also expected to find ways to work on exceptions and limitations to copyrights for libraries, archives, education and research, as developed countries oppose normative work, and developing countries want international instruments.
An informal meeting is scheduled to take place on 12 December at the World Trade Organization on a multilateral register for geographical indications of wines and spirits. The meeting is expected to discuss how to move the work in the negotiations, and how to reflect it in the post-Bali work programme, according to a source.
As a result of the America Invents Act enacted three years ago, the United States Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) now handles inter partes reviews (IPR)—a new trial proceeding used to challenge the validity of patent claims based on patents and printed publications. Recently, the PTAB has caused a split concerning the proper scope of the IPR joinder provision, which grants the PTAB discretion to join a “party” to a previously-instituted IPR. In the past, the PTAB interpreted the term “party” expansively to include petitioners for whom it had already instituted an IPR. Petitioners were quick to jump on this loophole, and have since sought to raise new arguments in an instituted IPR by filing a subsequent petition and seeking joinder with the in-progress proceeding.
A seminar on innovation and access to medicine last week examined the issue of access to hepatitis C treatment, looking at the HIV/AIDS path. Voluntary licences, such as the one entered by Gilead for its hepatitis drugs, have been applauded but such licences often do not cover middle-income countries, which are home to the bulk of hepatitis C patients, and whose poor populations remain unable to access treatment.