Original news and analysis on international IP policy
CAPE TOWN - The much-anticipated process of public submissions into the draft South Africa National Intellectual Property Policy has come to a close. The country’s trade minister says the office is busy collating the 100 documents submitted by interested stakeholders and plans to submit a formal policy to cabinet for approval in the first quarter of next year.
CAPE TOWN – The much-anticipated process of gathering public submissions on the draft South Africa National Intellectual Property Policy has come to a close. The country’s trade minister says the office is busy collating some 100 documents submitted by interested…
Global health diplomacy was the subject of a symposium organised by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute this week. The symposium explored the crossing lines between health diplomacy and science diplomacy, in particular how can diplomacy facilitate international scientific cooperation in health. This week was also the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization protocol against illicit trade in tobacco products.
Margot Kaminski writes in Concurring Opinions: Yesterday, Wikileaks leaked the draft IP chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The US Trade Representative has shown the draft text to its closed advisory committees, but not to anybody else. Content industries and pharmaceutical industries sit on the IP advisory committee. Internet industries, smaller innovators, generics companies, and public interest groups do not. This is no accident. When Congress established the trade negotiating system, it exempted the Trade Representative from requirements of an open government law that was enacted to prevent agency capture.
CNET News reports: A federal judge has dismissed a copyright infringement lawsuit that an author group brought against Google, concluding that books are like Web pages when it comes to indexing them and displaying small excerpts in search results.
The World Intellectual Property Organization today issued its second-ever report on global IP trends, focussing on brands, the relevance of reputation, and image in the global marketplace. Increases in trademark applications and the global value of brands are presented in the report, which looks at economic impact, competition, and concerns over counterfeiting of brands.
The original 10 internet governance principles that formed the basis for Brazil's Marco Civil legislation were presented proudly by the Brazilian delegation to the Internet Governance Forum in Vilnius. That was in 2010. In 2012, civil society organisations warned that an amended Marco Civil could erode freedom of the internet. It took yet another year and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden to bring the original ideas, developed in a forward-looking broad public consultation process, back to the floor of the Brazilian Parliament – and there the fight was going on tonight (14 November).
Licences for Europe, a European Commission-launched stakeholder dialogue intended to make more copyright-protected content available online, ended today with some concrete proposals but also some criticism. The exercise - which focussed on cross-border access and portability of services, user-generated content and micro-licensing, audiovisual cultural heritage, and text and data mining - brought applause from book publishers and commercial broadcasters, but complaints from civil society groups and internet companies.
For years, the United States and partner governments have worked vigorously to keep the publics they represent from knowing what they are negotiating behind closed doors in the top-secret Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. But today’s Wikileaks release of the draft intellectual property chapter blew that up, confirming the fears of public interest groups that this is an agreement heavily weighted toward big industry interests.
The US Supreme Court yesterday let stand an important appellate court ruling on copyright law, giving a boost to artists who repurpose others’ works and to supporters of fair use rights. This decision, however, upset many copyright owners, who fear it will allow their works to be used without payment and without their consent.
An event being held in Durban, South Africa next week will bring the expertise of global and local businesses, governments, academics and others to the issues of harnessing foreign intellectual property rights as well as creating local IP rights.
This article provides an update on recent changes in the copyright legislative and regulatory framework in Russia, in particular, following up on the first decisions enforcing the recently introduced law against online video piracy and the announcement of the establishment of the new federal authority for copyright.