Original news and analysis on international IP policy
A new academic report looks into the relationship between intellectual property and access to science and culture, in the wake of work on the issue by former United Nations Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, Farida Shaheed. Contributors to the report aimed at reflecting on how the intellectual property system can foster economic growth while encouraging non-economic values and objectives of human development.
The United Kingdom government is preparing to ratify the Unified Patent Court Agreement, it said on 28 November. The move took the patent community by surprise but failed to relieve uncertainty about what will happen when the UK finally Brexits the EU, according to patent attorneys in the UK.
The Staff Association of the Geneva-based European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) this week issued a strongly worded statement in solidarity with staff at the European Patent Office. They called the EPO essential to Europe and said the EPO president's repressive "19th century"-style anti-worker tactics are endangering the institution and the European economy.
The European Union Council of member states today agreed on draft regulations to prevent blocking of cross-border e-commerce, but appears to retain copyright restrictions.
The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) today announced that its director general is stepping down at the end of January.
Collective management organisations need to embrace online trading platforms, so as to increase earnings for economies and creators. That was the call made during a recent regional workshop on digital licensing and documentation in Harare, Zimbabwe for music collective management organisations (CMOs) by the member states of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO).
Part of the decision whether to file a patent in a particular country rests on how likely it is the patent can be effectively enforced, but until recently the information needed to answer that question was mostly anecdotal, Nikolaos Papageorgiadis, University of Liverpool Management School (UK) international business lecturer, said at a webinar. To remedy that, he and Cranfield School of Management Economic Policy, Sustainability and Performance Reader Konstantinos Alexiou created the Index Of Patent Systems Strength, which ranks the effectiveness and efficiency of the patent systems of 49 countries.
Intellectual property in Russia will become a subject of antitrust regulation starting next year, according to recent statements of an official spokesman of the Russian Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS).
The German constitutional court has rebuffed a second complaint seeking to allow oversight bodies to see the US National Security Administration (NSA) selector list.
The Access to Medicine Index 2016 was published today, analysing the top 20 research-based pharmaceutical companies. The index looks at how those companies make medicines, vaccines and diagnostics more accessible in low- and middle-income countries. The index found progress in companies' efforts to improve access but little support for flexibilities enshrined in international trade rules.