Original news and analysis on international IP policy
According to an internal report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Global Fund Partnership team, the Ebola epidemic has virtually halted national HIV efforts in Sierra Leone. In particular, patients stopped their treatments and the supply chain was disrupted.
Reposted from Afro-IP and infojustice.org: A report entitled 'Copyright policy and the right to science and culture' authored by the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, Farida Shaheed, has been released, writes Prof. Carolyn Ncube.
South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal has been blessed for the past few decades by having in its ranks judges who have experience and expertise in the field of Intellectual Property Law, writes law professor Owen Dean. With the recent retirement of Louis Harms, the bench at the Supreme Court of Appeal has been denuded of judges who can be regarded as IP experts. The paucity of IP experience on the bench is regrettably beginning to show.
In recent times the Supreme Court of Appeal has given three IP judgments in trade mark cases which, it is respectfully submitted, have been wrongly decided and are not in harmony with the principles of trade mark law and practice, Dean argues.
The publishing industry in Uganda is a fast-rising sector, gauging by the many emerging publishing houses and self-publishers. With many titles on display, one of the ways authors and readers identify published works is the use of International Standard Book Number (ISBN).
The population in Uganda has been growing rapidly. The country now has 35 million people. In order to provide quality services to its citizens and to improve the national competitiveness through administration innovation, the government has adopted free and open source software as the preferred mode of operation for electronic government (e-government) services and platforms.
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.
A few days after the first South African case to consider the issue of internet keyword advertising (Cochrane Steel Products (Pty) Ltd v M-Systems Group (Pty) Ltd & Another Case 39605/13, 29 October 2014), we had the next instalment – from the English Court of Appeal – in the dispute between Interflora and Marks & Spencer (Interflora Inc & Another v Marks & Spencer plc [2014] EWCA Civ 1403). Yes, it is, indeed, not just any dispute concerning keyword advertising. It appears that these two litigants have taken it upon themselves to definitively settle the law relating to keyword advertising, through the various judgments their dispute is yielding.
In Kenya, residents living around Lake Bogoria in Baringo County have received Kenya shillings 2.3 million, about USD 26,000, as royalties paid by a Danish bio-enzyme company.
Local production of medicines in developing countries is key to advancing universal health coverage, but other factors need to be considered, such as the involvement of all stakeholders and policy coherence in governments, according to speakers attending the World Investment Forum this week. Several speakers called for a paradigm shift in global health.
With the world’s youngest population, fast-rising access to internet and rapid spread of the use of mobile phones, Ugandans are starting to embrace information and communication technology innovations. This is confirmed by the increasing number of mobile and web applications with working prototypes developed in the country.
The entry into force of an international treaty facilitating access to genetic resources and ensuring the fair sharing of potential commercial benefits has prompted the applicability of a European Union regulation relating to the treaty. This led a researcher to call on the treaty members to ensure its implementation protects the rights of indigenous and local communities.
The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) is holding meetings of its governing and technical bodies this week. In particular, the UPOV Council is expected to renew Francis Gurry's mandate as the organisation’s secretary-general, approve technical documents, and confirm the conformity of a Tanzanian plant breeders' rights act.
Meanwhile, civil society has sounded the alarm over what it considers to be efforts to harmonise the application and examination procedures by the seed industry. Separately, a civil society study, carried out on three developing countries claims that UPOV 1991 might be threatening the global right to food.