Category Regional Policy

Single European Patent Dominates IP Summit As European Parliament Vote Nears

Brussels, Belgium - As the value of intellectual property reaches unprecedented heights, policymakers, business leaders, and legal experts discussed the need for international patent harmonisation during a two-day patent conference in Brussels last week. With the vote on the European unitary patent and common litigation system just days away from parliamentary vote, participants focussed on what the new system may mean to business.

Libraries, NGOs Warn EU Commissioners Against Restrictive Copyright Licensing

A diverse group of more than two dozen groups representing libraries, digital civil liberties, free software and an open, user-friendly internet has called on European commissioners to refrain from overly restrictive copyright licensing policies and to consider flexibilities to copyright to encourage knowledge access. The commissioners were expected to meet today to discuss possible changes to EU copyright law.

Survey On IP: Policymakers Believe Junk Statistics; North-South Divide Dissolving

Preliminary findings of a survey aimed at mapping the current prevailing ideas on intellectual property confirmed recognised trends that academics and intergovernmental IP professionals look more favourably on weaker IP protection, and traditional North-South differences toward IP rights are becoming less clear cut. It also found that policymakers tend to rely heavily on statistics from industry to help them with their decisions, whether reliable or not.

Special Report Russia’s Enforcement Against Online Copyright Infringement

During the joint news conference held in Paris on 27 November by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, Medvedev was asked a question of legislative scrutiny with regard to internet regulation in Russia. In his reply, the Russian prime minister admitted that the current legislation regulating the internet is “imperfect” and called upon the international community to “consider parameters to regulate the operation of the internet on the national or international level.”

US Ambassador On WCIT: “ITU Is Not The Problem”

United States Ambassador Terry Kramer, head of the US delegation to the upcoming UN-led World Conference on International Telecommunication (WCIT) in Dubai, in a press call today warned against proposals that would invite the UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to get into the business of internet governance, be it routing interventions, content control issues, or changes in accounting for internet traffic. Yet reacting to an earlier call by ex-White House official Andrew McLaughlin at a New America Foundation conference to "dismantle the ITU", Kramer said: "I do not think the ITU is the problem."

EU Parliament To Vote On Measure Against Biopiracy; Focus On UN Protocol

European Union lawmakers will vote soon on a non-binding measure aimed at protecting genetic resources and fighting biopiracy, or misappropriation. Despite the critical importance of these issues, efforts to draw the European Parliament's attention to the resolution have been difficult and its outcome is less than clear, its author says.