Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The United States Congress and biotechnology industry are currently focused on healthcare reform, but biotech is also looking to the future at energy reform, patent reform and other intellectual property-related legislative priorities still on its agenda.
Anti-counterfeiting initiatives might have a negative impact on access to medicines while not addressing the problem of fake medicines, particularly in developing countries, according to panellists at a recent event organised by the Open Society Institute.
Just days after the French Parliament adopted a bill aiming to protect literary and artistic intellectual property rights online on 25 September; the law is being challenged on constitutionality grounds.
Intellectual property rights are a key to innovation, the mitigation of climate change, an incentive to spur the economy and a creator of jobs, according to participants in several recent industry events and activities.
The third amendment of Chinese Patent Law enters into force from 1 October, 2009. This article by Wenting Cheng explores the major changes in substantive requirements for patent grant, post-grant enforcement and adaptation of Chinese Patent Law to international norms on the protection of intellectual property.
A mere “affirmation of commitments” (AoC) between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the United States Department of Commerce has replaced the decade-old joint project agreement in place in different forms since ICANN started technical coordination of names and numbers on the net in 1998.
When Amazon.com remotely deleted George Orwell’s “1984" and “Animal Farm” from its Kindle e-books, it stirred up a hornet’s nest of complaints about privacy, the potential erosion of copyright users’ rights and censorship. Is the shift to “tethered devices” a real cause for concern or much ado about nothing?
With a day to go before the joint project agreement between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the United States Department of Commerce (DoC) is set to expire, calls for continuous US oversight role have been reiterated by US politicians and private-sector representatives who reason that this oversight is especially needed in the face of the planned introduction of new internet top-level domains like .shop.
As the United States is moving to ensure that internet (net) neutrality is preserved in that country, some are hoping other regions of the world will take notice, particularly the European Union.
A recent two-day conference of the World Intellectual Property Organization on IP infrastructure also served as a campaign platform of sorts for several candidates vying to be the next head of the European Patent Office in Munich starting in mid-2010.
Several strategy papers laying out a plan to aid European Union member states in responding to the pandemic outbreak of H1N1 influenza were published last week by the European Commission, as Europe enters its fall flu season. Meanwhile, a partnership between the Commission and the European pharmaceutical industry announced a second call for proposals, aimed at increasing research and development of medicines for cancer as well as infectious disease.
Google’s court settlement in the United States that could allow the search engine giant to sell scanned books online is increasingly coming under fire prior to the final hearing in the matter next month. Government entities and groups in the United States and in Europe that oppose the settlement could, at the very least, temporarily derail Google Book Search, according to sources.