Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Indigenous people and governments like the United States' may be able to help each other, especially when it comes to protecting traditional knowledge while also using it combat global crises like climate change, says Terry Williams of the Tulalip Tribes. But additional protection for traditional knowledge is needed.
NAIROBI - An influential manufacturers' lobbying group in Kenya is pushing the government to start enforcing an anti-counterfeiting law within weeks, despite fears from public health advocates that the new rules will impede access to generic drugs and set an unwanted precedent in East Africa.
COPENHAGEN - A top priority for Sweden as it takes over the EU presidency on 1 July is to boost negotiations on a Community patent system and a European Patent Court, the government says. Its work programme also emphasises the need for "effective protection of intellectual property rights" and lists a conference on enforcement. Officials, however, deny that enforcement is among the presidency's main IP focus. And the Pirate Party is concerned.
TERUEL, SPAIN - Geographical indications (GIs) are in the interest of both producers and consumers as they provide a tool for sustainable economic growth and offer a guarantee of quality, concluded a high-level meeting of GI proponents last week. However, with shortcomings in the international framework and a lack of consensus on GIs, countries have been trying to find legal ways to address the issue.
South Africa could become the first developing country to permit authors to be paid when libraries lend their books if an authors’ group gets it way, but the proposal is likely to spur strong opposition from access-to-knowledge advocates and libraries.
Stringent intellectual property rules could hamper the spread of technology needed to fight climate change, an advisor to European Union policy-makers has warned.
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), a high-impact nonprofit organisation focussed on access to software in the broader scope of participation in the digital society, this week named named new leadership for the first time in nearly a decade since its inception.
Video is becoming an increasingly important communication tool on the web, but questions must be asked about its future, said speakers a recent conference. Will it be a medium of self-expression, available for all, or a translation of television to the internet, where content is provided by some and consumed by the rest? A gathering of technologists, academics, filmmakers and others in New York last week issued a call for a freer video culture.
An international coalition of consumer groups has issued a resolution calling into question global enforcement policy and offering core principles for policymakers to consider in setting new enforcement standards.
The German Parliament on Thursday evening passed legislation that obliges internet service providers (ISPs) to filter websites allegedly containing child abuse material, by a vote of 389 to 146. The vote followed fierce debate about the secret filtering list to be put together by the German Federal Police and transmitted to ISPs once a day with only occasional checks by a five-member monitoring body. Opposition parties joined civil rights organisations in warning that Germany is introducing blocking architecture that was extensible and could be used to “censor“ other content without due process.
BANGKOK - Thailand plans to toughen its intellectual property protection law to punish, for the first time, buyers of products that breach copyright and trademark laws, aiming primarily at pirated music and movies and fake brand-name goods, a senior Thai official said Thursday.
A well-liked and influential IP policymaker in Geneva will head Chile’s national IP office, a US lawyer responsible for perhaps the world’s biggest industry patent portfolio will head the US IP office, and a fixture in the Geneva international trade negotiating and lobbying community is heading home to Canada.