Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The intergovernmental Council of Europe, based in Strasbourg, France, has published a freely available report on exceptions and limitations to copyright. The report comes as a contribution to the ongoing process of reforming European copyright rules.
MONTREUX -- The legal profession is experiencing a “radical change” due to technology, a globally known author told the recent European IP Law Summit in Montreux, Switzerland. Technology has become “affordable” and professions “unaffordable” in a technology-based internet society, he said. Separately, a Belgian appeals court judge laid out details on the Unified Patent Court of Europe.
The European Patent Office today released a new policy brief on climate change mitigation technologies, with a focus on renewable energy technologies, which are on the rise.
The European Patent Office today issued a clarification about the patenting of plant and animal products, putting it in line with a European Commission clarification that such products obtained through a biological breeding process should not be patentable.
In a decision today, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg put an end to a complaint by Novartis Europharm Ltd against the European Commission over the terms for data exclusivity (C-629/15 P). Novartis had appealed an earlier decision by the European Court (the first instance) which had rejected the claims by the pharmaceutical company that it should be granted additional data exclusivity for Aclasta, developed from Novartis' older drug Zometa. No way, the Court of Justice said today, upholding the judgment by the lower court that had found that Novartis' interpretation of the rules would effectively allow the extension of data exclusivity for a drug forever.
Just before the upcoming elections in September, the German government seems eager to push through legislation to rein in internet hate speech, fake news, and also legalise state hacks and police searches of computers and mobile phones against suspects of all kinds. Even at the United Nations and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) level the recent initiatives in Germany have resulted in some raised eyebrows. The draft hate speech law has also “made it to the alert list of the Council of Europe Platform to promote the protection of journalism.”
European Patent Office employees, fed up with a series of reforms proposed by President Benoît Battistelli, have called “Respect Staff” strikes on 30 June and 3 July in all European Patent Office locations - Munich, The Hague, Berlin and Vienna.
With figures now available for what intellectual property infringement is worth, the European Union copyright office made a call to action at its 2nd International IP Enforcement Summit in Berlin, which ended today. “Now that we know the facts, it is time to move to action and problem solving,” said Antonio Campinos, head of the EU IP Office (EUIPO).
There are still many unanswered questions about intellectual property rights, speakers said during an academic conference last week in Geneva. Think tank analyst and author Pedro Roffe, who was the focal point of the conference, said at the event that there is “particularly in Geneva” place for dialogue about “very important and emerging” IP questions.
BERLIN -- The future of the European intellectual property enforcement framework is under heavy discussion at the second IP Enforcement Summit of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) in Berlin today.
Inspiring, generous, humanist, nobody was short of praise and anecdotes at an event last week to celebrate the lifelong contribution of Pedro Roffe, well-known Geneva thinker and writer on intellectual property. A conference on the evolution of intellectual property, trade and development had been organised for the occasion, congregating many IP experts offering their perspective on the role of IP in fields, such as public health, innovation policy, and competition law.
The Unified Patent Court (UPC) in Europe was previously expected to open for business in December 2017 but that timeline has now slipped.