Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The first financial marketplace for the trading of patent rights is scheduled to go online this year, and other countries are eyeing the United States’ progress with interest.
Legislative proposals for a single European patent emerged from the European Commission this week. If approved by the European Parliament and Council, the measures will make patents granted in one country valid in all participating EU member states and drastically cut the cost of patent protection, the Commission said. Patent lawyers praised the proposals but said the issue of an EU-wide patent litigation court must be resolved first.
A European Commission-backed project to identify copyright holders and define orphan works - whose copyright owners cannot be found - recently presented its results and is heading to a second phase with more partners. The project advances the European effort at digitalising content through the Europeana project, a competing project to the Google Books project.
A hundred years ago, Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and his student Gilles Holst discovered a property that was to launch decades of fervent research to understand the phenomenon: Superconductivity. Today, researchers are still trying to find ways to use this remarkable property, but are celebrating the centenary of its discovery.
Intellectual property is an available space in which any country can compete, but certain policies are helpful, the head of the World Intellectual Property Organization said today. And he described a global geographic shift in innovation away from Europe and the United States.
Google and the European Patent Office have signed a long-term agreement to collaborate on machine translation of patents, according to the EPO.
In a flurry of patent-related developments in Europe this week, plans for a single European patent moved a step closer, efforts to create a European-wide patent court faltered, the United Kingdom sought guidance in a case with implications for medicinal research, and the EU high court may be asked to review the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).
In a significant development for ongoing copyright negotiations at the World Intellectual Property Organization, the World Blind Union has distanced itself from initiatives it sees as distractions from a primary goal at the international level: To get agreement on a treaty promoting better access to reading material for visually impaired readers.
A European Parliament majority this week approved a free trade agreement with Korea with strong provisions on intellectual property rights protection, according to Robert Stury, rapporteur of the lead EP Committee on the dossier.
Determining the value of patented inventions is akin to a guessing game, said a speaker at the World Intellectual Property Organization yesterday. Companies should try to spread their patents over related technological innovations rather focusing on one patent, hoping it will be “the philosopher’s stone”.