Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The government of oil-dependent Saudi Arabia has posted a series of requests for proposals for renewable energy technology partnerships via the World Intellectual Property Organization "Green" initiative that provides a marketplace for IP-protected products related to the environment.
A cohort of senior Chinese officials from the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) has graduated from a four-month training programme at the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Queen Mary University of London.
Fifa Rahman writes: The global health world, particularly as concerns skyrocketing drug prices and patent abuse, is in a unique space in time. Recently, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has been carrying on as per usual. It has threatened the Malaysian and Colombian governments at numerous junctures to prevent them from issuing compulsory licences – a completely legal mechanism which the US uses regularly - to access generic hepatitis C drugs. The Trump Administration has sent delegations to global health agencies in Geneva to intimidate them into reducing, or hiding, work on TRIPS flexibilities and fairer drug pricing.
Dilip Shah was passionately committed to the twin causes of promoting fair access to medicines around the world, and to the success of the local Indian pharmaceutical industry. A bright light is out, writes Prof. Frederick Abbott.
Dilip Shah, founder of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA) the organisation that represented the interests of Indian drug makers passed away in Mumbai on Friday. He was 77. Known in the industry as "DG", Mr Shah started the IPA when the Indian pharma companies were trying to find their feet in the global pharma landscape that was dominated by the multinational pharma companies predominantly based out of Europe and USA. Shah who himself spent most of his career with the MNC drug companies ...
The national intellectual property offices of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) this week advanced work on developing a regional trademark registration system, according to European Union sources working with them.
The government of Malaysia continues to face pressure from the United States pharmaceutical industry and potentially the US government to undo an action taken to make a key hepatitis C medicine more affordable in the country. Now Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, Doctors Without Borders) has weighed in to defend the government's right to use a patent flexibility in global trade law that allows them to take such actions on behalf of their citizens.
Tuberculosis and its variant - Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (DR-TB) - are global public health emergencies. Current treatment regimens are expensive, tedious and prolonged: the overall treatment duration is 20 months or more, requiring daily administration of drugs that are more toxic and less effective than those used to treat drug-susceptible TB. Most of the drugs for treating TB are old and are known to have severe side-effects, writes Sandeep K. Rathod.
BANGKOK – The current research and development model may encourage innovation in medicines, but has caused drugs to become unaffordable and inaccessible for people, particularly those in low- and middle-income countries, panellists and participants at a major conference here said.
Dean Pinkert writes: The United States Trade Representative (USTR) has been open about its view of the difficulties faced by US companies who claim – generally anonymously – that they have been forced to transfer technology to Chinese entities: “The fact that China systematically implements its technology transfer regime in informal and indirect ways makes it ‘just as effective [as written requirements], but almost impossible to prosecute.’” As I explain in this article, I believe such informality is not merely a barrier to prosecutions; it also presents conceptual challenges for US trade negotiators as they attempt to craft effective means to address the concerns of US companies doing business in China.