Original news and analysis on international IP policy
BRUXELLES – Les accords de commerce ne doivent pas contenir de clauses relatives aux droits de propriété intellectuelle susceptibles de remettre en cause l’accès des pays pauvres aux médicaments à des prix abordables, a déclaré un député chevronné du Parlement européen.
BRUSSELS - Trade agreements must not contain clauses on intellectual property rights that could imperil the poor’s access to affordable medicines, a veteran member of the European Parliament (MEP) has said.
Representatives of the World Health Organization and the European pharmaceutical industry today answered questions from the Council of Europe and the press on whether they had mishandled an outbreak of influenza this summer.
The World Health Organization today defended its declaration of a global influenza pandemic, and saying any allegations that it is fake are “wrong and irresponsible.” The statement comes as the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) prepares for a public hearing tomorrow morning in Strasbourg to examine the allegations, involving representatives of the WHO and European vaccine manufacturers will be in attendance, as will independent medical experts.
US-based software company Oracle can have its Sun and MySQL too, the European Commission ruled today. The subject of an examination since September 2009, the Oracle-Sun merger deal came under scrutiny over anti-competition concerns.
Enforcement of rights and a global harmonisation of systems look to be among the focal points of trademark and geographical indications policy in 2010. Significant activity will occur in these areas in Europe. But whether it is the setting up of a database for trademark registration, amendments to the Lisbon Treaty on the Protection of Appellation of Origin, or the evaluation of the European trademark system, efforts to improve current tools are showing at national and international levels.
The intellectual property system seems to be tight at the seams with a global overload of work for national IP offices and a backlog in patent requests. Further international cooperation and some adjustments are necessary to keep an efficient high quality IP system, according to speakers at a private-sector meeting in Geneva on 14-15 January.
The European Union appears to be preparing for adoption of the "gold standard" of enforcement, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), as intellectual property law expert Annette Kur from the Max Planck Institute of Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law said it is now called.
Recent customs seizures by some European Union members of Indian-made generic drugs en route to Latin America have caused uproar amongst development NGOs. But their claims are not only wide of the mark but dangerous, say Philip Stevens and Julian Harris.
US software giant Microsoft said Thursday that users globally have started to join the fight against software piracy by sending in over 150,000 reports about problems with fake Microsoft products over the last two years.
European Union governments have unanimously approved a roadmap for a single European patent regime. The system is seen as key to making patenting less expensive and more efficient for European inventors, but the devil, as always, is in the details, stakeholders say.
On 1 December, the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force, bringing a variety of changes across the European Union. Also this week, a new administrative cabinet has been named to represent the European Commission for the next five years, along with some changes in the structure of the EU administrative body.