Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Innovation or “jugaad” has always driven the Indian economy. However, the last decade has been witness to an emerging paradigm shift to high-quality value-added innovation, writes industry lawyer Sunita K. Sreedharan.
Daniele Dionisio writes: The current break-through of multinational drug corporations in India couples with the protectionist policies pursued by the US and EU and with India’s obligations as a WTO member. Taken together, these realities mean a heavy threat to India’s freedom as independent provider of lifesaving, affordable and state-of-the-art antiretroviral medicines to the resource-limited countries.
If public procurement for innovation is to be seen as part of developing countries’ industrial-policy portfolio, a recent paper argues accession to the GPA would not help, and advises against it, writes Riaz K. Tayob.
Several major generic-medicine producing nations last week held a discussion on the dangers of compromised medical products and joined together to urge new steps such as defining terms, focussing on public health and strengthening national regulatory capabilities beyond strictly enforcement actions that they say have been manipulated and at times counterproductive.
Europe has promised at the "highest levels" to fix laws that caused generic medicine seizures in the Netherlands, the Indian Minister of Commerce and Industry said today. The minister is in Geneva for meetings on the ongoing Doha Round trade liberalisation talks at the World Trade Organization.
India’s laws on traditional knowledge are yielding interesting positive and negative results, writes Mohan Dewan.
European and Indian business not only have privileged access to information on the planned EU-India free trade agreement, they even set the agenda for this negotiation from the start. That is the conclusion of a study by the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) and India FDI Watch published this week in Brussels and Delhi. Both organisations intend to appeal directly to the European Commission and the Indian government to stop negotiations as long as there is no access to negotiating positions and documents for all affected parties.
Une analyse des pratiques et des politiques impliquant la propriété intellectuelle, le transfert de technologie et le développement démontre la difficulté à parvenir à une corrélation positive entre les différents domaines, écrit Cheikh Kane.
中国政府认为自己的行动符合其公民的最佳利益。它正在规范互联网，以保护其人民不受色情和其他令人生厌内容的危害。然而，批评者声称，中国大幅限制大陆居民可以网上观看、听闻和言论的东西，因此犯了审查过分之过。
China’s government says it is acting in the best interests of its citizens. It is regulating the internet in order to protect its people from pornography and other objectionable content. Critics, however, assert that China is guilty of wide-ranging censorship, drastically limiting what mainland residents can see, hear and say online. Moreover, according to a growing chorus, this online censorship violates World Trade Organization rules.
The global AIDS community meeting in Vienna last week ended with renewed determination to fight the epidemic but underlined an urgent need for increased funding to sustain scientific advances and universal access. Some warned against an intellectual property rights enforcement push threatening global access in particular through bilateral and regional trade agreements.
In the past two years, China has acted to improve the protection of intellectual property rights with a need for continuing effort, a World Trade Organization report has found, but the country came under criticism this week from key trading partners such as the United States and the European Union for not providing adequate enforcement and for self-serving innovation practices.