Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Patents aren't what they used to be at the World Intellectual Property Organization. Discussions to come up with a work plan at the Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (SCP) this week and in recent meetings point to the possibility of a sea change in thinking over what matters about intellectual property policy and law.
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The countries that own most of the world’s intellectual property rights have all but completed an agreement among themselves that raises the level of protection of those rights while appearing to reduce obligations placed on rights holders. Now they’ll need to find ways to apply it to the countries of the world seen as responsible for much of the infringing material.
A leading indigenous negotiator for a UN protocol on biodiversity access and benefit sharing says the process will likely yield a highly diluted, rights-poor protocol and that Indigenous Peoples' negotiating leverage is slipping.
The round of negotiations in Tokyo last week on the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will be the last in the several-year long process to come to a final agreement, negotiators have said. The latest text - along with highlighted issue areas on which certain countries still have reservations - will be released before the end of the week, negotiators told Intellectual Property Watch.
The United States’ search for ways to spark its job growth has led to a focus on intellectual property rights, and this week several significant developments boiled over.
The United States National Institutes of Health has become the first patent holder to join the newly created Medicines Patent Pool, a project of drug purchasing mechanism UNITAID. Public health organisations hailed the move as key step in the right direction but said there is still much work to do.
Member governments of the World Intellectual Property Organization this week set in motion negotiations that could lead to international treaties or other instruments on exceptions and limitations to copyright, the protection of traditional knowledge and folklore, and harmonisation of industrial design laws. Negotiations won’t be without difficulty, however.
The adoption of 1997 landmark environmental agreement the Kyoto Protocol caused a surge in environmental innovation, but the countries which are innovating and the licensees of this technology are limited, finds a newly released study making use of patent data to track where technological responses to climate change are coming from as well as the licensing practices of the technology owners.
Can the digital environment be used in a way that promotes real human rights? A group of activists speaking yesterday alongside the ongoing UN Human Rights Council believes that it can, and provided several examples of work they are doing to make that happen.
Substantive progress eluded the negotiators of a draft protocol on biodiversity access and benefit sharing last week in Montreal, according to participating sources. The third attempt at finding consensus on key aspects of the text was unsuccessful and negotiations will carry on at the major United Nations meeting on biodiversity next month in Japan.
Echoes of the struggles and advances in patent policy around the world were heard this week in the annual meeting of the member governments of the UN World Intellectual Property Organization. At stake is no less than the future of societies everywhere.