Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Echoing the United States' Special 301 Report on alleged inadequacy of trading partners’ protection of US intellectual property rights, the European Commission has released its first ever Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List, which exposes rogue cyberlockers, stream-ripping sites as well as peer-to-peer and BitTorrent indexing sites among the threats to the EU's legitimate intellectual property-driven businesses.
New ideas are getting harder to find, and with less ideas there is a decline in organisational productivity and economic growth. This isn’t new, nor is the fact that to counterbalance the decline in idea generation, research and development have received and continue to require heavy investment. But with daily news of innovation centres opening up across the globe, the question remains whether initiatives like open innovation, crowdsourcing, or simply putting more scientific brains together will do this investment justice.
Last month, leading representatives of the IP, R&D and technology arenas met in Switzerland to discuss a technology-based alternative to human only idea generation. Hosted by data-driven invention company Iprova, the 2nd Data-Driven Invention Forum saw attendees from companies, such as Panasonic, Philips and DuPont as well as many other global organisations explore the future of innovation and the role data-driven invention plays in it. Here are some of the conclusions of the conference.
Big platform providers and small hosters alike shall be obliged to censor, according to a draft regulation presented by the European Commission in mid-September and accepted by EU member states at their Council meeting today.
European creators are alleging a scaremongering campaign by YouTube, and more than 30 entities representing creators in France say Google and YouTube are leading a massive fake information campaign against the European copyright directive currently under discussion in order to protect their commercial interests.
Six organisations, including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, Doctors Without Borders), today appealed a European Patent Office decision to uphold Gilead Science's patent on hepatitis C drug sofosbuvir.
THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS -- The number of blockchain inventions is mushrooming, and the European Patent Office wants to ensure it handles the increasing patent applications consistently, officials said at a 4 December conference that brought together around 350 patent examiners and practitioners.
BERLIN -- Germany's controversial hate speech legislation is working well, a representative of the German Ministry of Justice said during a panel today (27 November) at the German national Internet Governance Forum in Berlin.
The European Commission has proposed an exception to the extended period of patent protection that the European Union provides to original drug manufacturers for certain products, in order to boost the competitiveness of EU generic and biosimilar industries in global markets. The exception will allow EU generic and biosimilar companies to manufacture protected drugs for export during this patent extension period. Stakeholders are so far unhappy with the exception. Meanwhile, studies analyse its potential economic impacts and legal implications, and the Commission remains confident that safeguards it is putting in place will keep the lower-priced medicines from making their way back into the EU.
A food’s taste cannot be pinned down with enough precision and objectivity to make it copyrightable under EU law, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said on 13 November. The decision creates a new standard that could be applied to all European copyright works, but would likely be the same under US law, intellectual property lawyers said.
A new directive adopted today by European Union member governments updates and strengthens regulations on video-sharing platforms and other newer forms of media, emphasising the public interest, elevating protections for children, and establishing a 30 percent quota of European content in on-demand audiovisual media services.
French advocacy group La Quadrature du Net has declared recent French government plans to regulate internet hate speech insufficient, and is calling for more in-depth reforms. These could include the promotion of alternative social media platforms and a decentralised approach to regulation, according to an organisation press release.
Catherine Chammartin is the Director of the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property (IPI). A former specialist in international tax policy, she took office at IPI in November 2015. In an exclusive interview with Intellectual Property Watch's Catherine Saez, she explained the priorities of the office under her leadership, and the office's contribution to the success of Switzerland's innovation record.