Original news and analysis on international IP policy
After hours of late night discussion, the European Union Foreign Affairs Council of Ministers meeting in Luxembourg Friday finally excluded the audiovisual sector from the negotiation mandate for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Poland’s Minister of Culture and National Heritage Bogdan Zdrojewski has called on the country’s Ministry of Justice to create and integrate intellectual property courts into the country’s legal system. Under the plan, the new entities would become departments of regular courts, and they would be solely responsible for handling cases involving intellectual property, including disputes related to authors’ rights, trademarks and patents.
Draft legislation updating UK copyright exceptions is out for comment, the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has said.
Ten years after applying for membership, Croatia is finally joining the European Union on 1 July 2013. Tanja Rajić, senior associate at PETOSEVIC, explains how six years of accession negotiations and the adoption of the acquis communautaire have affected intellectual property protection in Croatia and prepared it for becoming a member state.
A recent Geneva-based study found that so-called evergreening practices utilised by drug manufacturers are successful in protecting profits by maintaining company market share and offsetting generic competition and cost containment policies.
Secrecy in trade negotiations and privileged access for business and trade associations does not violate EU law, according to a judgment handed in by the Court of the European Union in Luxembourg today.
Officials from the IP5, the five largest intellectual property offices in the world, met this week to move forward on harmonising patent law procedure between the offices.
Washington, DC – Collaboration, protection, and data were keywords during the second and final day of this week’s World Creators Summit (WCS) as discussions about innovative solutions to online infringement and improving collection rights management dominated the day.
Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, today gave some hints about upcoming regulations intended to ensure competition in cross-border European internet.
The European Court of Justice in a decision dated 30 May ordered Sweden to pay a lump sum of €3 million euros for its delay in transposing the controversial 2006 EU data retention directive into national law in time.
Audiovisual content should be out of scope for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), but protection of European geographical indications is covered and intellectual property issues in general “explored,” European Union governments wrote in their draft negotiation mandate for the Commission, dated 21 May.
The European Patent Office is continuing to grant patents on conventional plants despite demands from the European Parliament and the German Parliament that the patent office refrain from granting such patents, the coalition of non-governmental organisations called "No patents on seeds" said in a release.