Original news and analysis on international IP policy
A list of answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) about the much-disputed anti-piracy legislation before the United States Congress has been published by CNET News. It also reported that some 4.5 million people signed the petition on Google during the blackout protest yesterday.
"Idea Rights: A Guide to Intellectual Property" is a new book that looks at the major statutes and cases in intellectual property law with experienced, yet fresh, eyes.
The United States Supreme Court today ruled on one of the top intellectual property legal cases expected this year. The case questioned whether the US Congress acted constitutionally when it restored copyright to millions of foreign works that had been in the public domain in the US. And it affirmed Congress' actions, allowing the US to avoid questions of compliance with its international obligations.
In an unprecedented action suggesting intellectual property rights have bumped up against an access threshold, thousands of websites have gone "dark" today in protest against two draft anti-piracy and counterfeiting bills in the US Congress that the protestors say would harm freedoms online. The protest includes major technology firms like Google, Mozilla, Wikipedia, Flickr, Reddit, Vimeo and WordPress.
As of today, no one is really sure what the future holds for the controversial internet anti-piracy bills in the United States.
US President Obama today announced a proposal to combine six government agencies working in areas of international trade and economics, aimed at boosting efficiency. This includes the Commerce Department, which currently houses the US Patent and Trademark Office, and it appears it would affect the USPTO.
This year could bring major changes in US intellectual property law. Congress and the nation’s courts will be confronting a variety of issues that have broad ramifications for copyrights, trademarks and patents. Here are some of the top developments to watch in 2012.
On the eve of the start of the application period for new generic top level domains (gTLDs) on the internet, the chair of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Steve Crocker, described the program as a "major step in the globalisation of the internet." For the first time there will be equal access and an equal invitation to users from all over the world to have generic domain names, Crocker said at the National Press Club in Washington, DC today.
A new report from the United States Department of Commerce on competitiveness and innovation details the US need to boost innovation in order to compete globally and grow the economy. But while it stresses the need for strong intellectual property rights enforcement to create high-priced monopolies as an incentive for innovation, it also acknowledges that access to inexpensive technology and ideas is key to innovation and entrepreneurship. Furthermore, it shows that the rise in IP rights in recent years has been accompanied by a drop in innovation.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has published four notices of proposed rulemaking implementing provisions of the patent reform law signed last year. The issuance of the rules, which came ahead of schedule, opens a 60-day comment period on the draft rules.
The sudden change in officials in charge of international policy at the United States Patent and Trademark Office could reflect shifting priorities at the World Intellectual Property Organization.
The most-read Intellectual Property Watch stories of 2011 demonstrated the versatility and range of our readers from around the globe, from an intense focus on international and national copyright issues to bilateral and plurilateral free trade agreements, to issues in India and Brazil, patent laws, patents in agriculture, scientific knowledge, and of course, policies emerging in Geneva at the World Intellectual Property Organization, World Trade Organization, World Health Organization and elsewhere at the multilateral level. Most of all, they tell the story of the year gone by, with clear signals of what's to come in 2012.