Original news and analysis on international IP policy
World Intellectual Property Organization delegates this week have launched into negotiations expected to yield the first treaty creating exceptions and limitations to copyright for the benefit of visually impaired people. Many delegations have said much work remained to be done in the next ten days to breach differences. A new text was released this evening on commercial availability.
The European Commission (EC) has fined Danish pharmaceutical company Lundbeck as well as eight other generic manufacturers for delaying market entry of generic medicines by way of patent settlement agreements (also known as “pay-for-delay” agreements).
An article in the newly launched Journal of Health Diplomacy about the stalled progress at the World Health Organization for a medical research and development (R&D) convention discusses systemic failures in global health policy.
A guide to key provisions and limitations of the European Union directive on permitted uses of orphan works - those whose creators cannot be found - has been published by the Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL).
The latest instalment of the World Intellectual Property Organization seminar series titled “The Economics of Intellectual Property” covered the issue of product patents in the pharmaceutical industry. Discussion focussed on the economics of intellectual property rights and how pharmaceutical patent protection might not be the sole culprit in the access to innovation problem.
A new coalition of United States business groups, called the Alliance for Fair Trade with India (ATFI), launched today to take aim against what they say are discriminatory trade practices in India against US exports.
In their traditional communiqué, Group of Eight countries at their annual summit welcomed ongoing efforts to negotiate bilateral and multilateral trade deals which they say will allow them to overcome economic uncertainties and shoulder the responsibility to support prosperity worldwide.
The World Intellectual Property Organization diplomatic conference expected to yield a treaty creating exceptions and limitations to copyright for the benefit of visually impaired people opened today in Marrakesh, Morocco.
Assurances of good faith and willingness to find solutions for remaining issues were given by delegates, while WIPO Director General Francis Gurry called for unity, King Mohammed VI talked about moral obligation in a royal message, and visually impaired people called for negotiators to create history. All nonetheless agreed on the importance of the copyright system.
The United States Supreme Court in a five to three decision today found that settlement agreements by branded pharmaceutical companies involving payments to generic companies to delay their cheaper drugs' entry into the market may not be immune from antitrust scrutiny but are not "presumptively" unlawful. The case was sent back to lower court.
Last Thursday, the United States Supreme Court overturned more than 30 years of precedents and ruled that isolated genes cannot be patented. They are products of nature and thus not patent-eligible subject matter, the court unanimously held in Assoc. for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. This ruling puts the US at odds with most other nations, which allow genes to be patented. But because other major nations grant narrower gene patents, the net effect of Myriad will be to shift the US position on gene patents closer to that of other nations.
During day one of the Summit of the G8 countries at Lough Erne Golf Resort in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland today, President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and the President of the European Commission, Manuel Barroso, jointly announced the formal start of negotiations of the US-EU free trade agreement, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Prices of cancer drugs must be lowered to be affordable for patients and to maintain sound long-term healthcare policies, according to a group of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) experts in a recent Blood journal editorial.