Original news and analysis on international IP policy
World Health Organization Director General Margaret Chan was re-elected for another term at the annual May World Health Assembly. Now the WHO has issued a "report card" showing how she kept her promises during the first term. This includes a range of steps to ensure new drugs are affordable and accessible, even if intellectual property rights make them high-priced.
After years of at times embarrassing political and procedural wrangling, members of the European Union today agreed to create a single patent system for 25 EU member states, including a unified patent court split between Paris, Munich and London. The decision also contains a copyright element.
The UN World Intellectual Property Organization is centre stage when it comes to international IP policymaking, and has hosted great progress during the past 20 years by all accounts. But apart from updates and modifications to existing treaties, and its 2007 Development Agenda, its members have not managed to complete a major new treaty since 1996. Until now.
The accessibility and affordability of drugs in developing countries depend on robust generic competition and would benefit from greater transparency in the terms and conditions of licensing agreements, the acting head of the Medicines Patent Pool said on a panel at the World Intellectual Property Organization that included a speaker from the Indian generics industry and a representative of Gilead Sciences.
More than 130 members of the United States Congress have sent a letter to the US Trade Representative demanding greater access to the still-secret Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, while a new bill is being introduced to reform US trade policy. And another Congress member who earlier publicly leaked the intellectual property rights chapter of the agreement has sent a request to be included as a member of the US delegation to the negotiations.
United Kingdom communications regulator Ofcom today published three documents on digital copyright infringement, including a draft code requiring large internet service providers (ISPs) to inform customers of allegations that their internet connection has been used to infringe copyright, and consultations on the code and on cost-sharing.
It’s been called a patent war, and it’s raging over much of the globe. In at least ten countries - including the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia and South Korea - Apple is locked in ferocious legal battles against Google, Samsung and HTC over whose smartphones and tablets infringe whose patents.
There’s a lot a stake: Damages could run into billions of dollars. Even worse, the loser could wind up being forbidden to sell its products in various markets.
This costly, high-stakes global patent war may seem unprecedented. But according to many experts, that’s only partly true. In many ways, this patent war is similar to major patent disputes in the past. And it is likely a foretaste of more patent wars in the future.
RIO DE JANEIRO - Many of the technologies that can make the world more sustainable are available today. But how to transfer such green technologies to those most in need of them remains a question on which there are starkly divergent views - even after last week’s much-anticipated Rio+20 leaders’ summit.
The UN International Telecommunication Union is conducting constructive and potentially lucrative negotiations to update global telecommunications regulations, but the message keeps getting garbled in public fora, ITU officials said.
The next president and CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was named today.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) today issued a declaration in support of public service media's role in society, including as a driver of innovation and a trusted independent voice.
The freedom to access the internet does not translate into freedom of expression in many countries of the world, including in western economies, according to speakers at a peer forum organised yesterday by the United States mission to the United Nations in Geneva.