Original news and analysis on international IP policy
In a US burger battle, it appears that Smashburger may soon end up with a bad taste in its mouth if In-N-Out’s allegations in its latest trademark complaint against Smashburger are proven true.
NEW YORK – An event of international law enforcement, security experts and industry this week at the United Nations headquarters in New York aimed at building strategies against a wide range of intellectual property crime worldwide. At the event, a senior United States official discussed plans to expand a program of US IP experts abroad.
China and the European Union appear to be on track to complete a deal on geographical indications that could include protection of some 100 products each from the EU and China. Comments have been received on the proposed list and are undergoing translation. Among them, a United States lobby group said the list for China to protect unfairly includes several generic food names that should not belong solely to the EU.
A United States State Department science envoy quit yesterday in protest over US President Donald Trump's pullout from the Paris climate accord and defensive comments after violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. But according to a press report, Peter Hotez, a past science adviser who has been a featured speaker of a UN agency and pharmaceutical industry group in Geneva, is stepping up to offer his services without concern for Trump's actions.
Intellectual Property Watch recently conducted an interview with Ben Sobel, law and technology researcher, teacher, and fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Sobel has focused his research on copyright and the fair use doctrine, in particular in the context of artificial intelligence (AI). Below, he shares his views on expressive machine learning, “the fair use dilemma” and “Big Content versus Little Users”. The most pressing copyright question has to do with AI readers, not AI authors, according to Sobel.
This summer, the International Trademark Association (INTA), the global trademark industry group, launched a one-of-a-kind pilot program offering pro bono attorneys the opportunity to help nonprofits and others obtain and protect trademarks. And in its first weeks, it is already receiving submissions and a positive response, according to an INTA representative.
With much of the rest of the western world on holidays, the Office of the United States Trade Representative spent this month in meetings and issuing statements about improving international trade conditions for the US.
Over the past two weeks, United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and other senior officials have been involved in activities with Canada and Mexico (under renegotiation of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA), Japan, South Korea, and China.
A new report from a global health advocacy group in Washington, DC shows the importance to the United States of US government investment in global health research and development and argues that more investment would have a tremendous positive impact on lives worldwide, including in fighting neglected diseases.
It’s been another dismal term for the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. Six of its patent law decisions were reviewed in the US Supreme Court’s 2016-17 term, and the Federal Circuit’s decisions were overturned in all six cases. That, unfortunately, is not surprising. Over the past 15 years, the tribunal once known as the nation’s “patent court” has seen many of its most important patent law decisions reversed by the Supreme Court– sometimes in withering opinions. This has seriously undermined the Federal Circuit’s power, reputation, jurisprudence, and (apparently) self-confidence – causing a major problem for the United States’ patent system.
For the past few years, publishers around the world have engaged in a sustained campaign to hold up Canada as proof that making fair dealing more flexible for education will hurt publishers. Those efforts rarely tell the whole story: that paid access remains the primary source of materials in Canada, that educational copyright policies in Canada are primarily a function of court decisions not copyright reform (the emphasis on fair dealing came before the 2012 reforms), that global publishers were reporting marketplace challenges that have nothing to do with copyright, that Canadian publishers that supposedly stopped publishing were still in business, that court affidavits from Canadian publishers focus on many concerns other than copyright, and that a study from one Canadian publisher association highlighted issues such as open access and used book sales. University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist expands on the reality of Canadian publishing and copyright law.