Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Access and benefit sharing will top agendas at several different intergovernmental bodies this year on issues of biodiversity, environment, food security and traditional knowledge, and stakeholders will be watching the movement across fora of emerging models and potential pitfalls from parallel negotiations.
Discussions at the World Intellectual Property Organization patent committee this week are focussed on a series of new studies, though one of the more difficult issues on the table - exceptions and limitations to patent law - will not be substantively dealt with until the next meeting in October. Discussions on future work for the committee, with a proposal on the table from Brazil for a new work programme on exceptions and limitations, are soon to begin and are likely to be the most difficult topic of the week.
Biodiversity preservation is getting a makeover, or so hope the organisers of an “EcoChic” event at the Palais de Nations yesterday. Attendees strategised about how the fickle spirit of fashion might be harnessed to support the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s access and benefit-sharing regime and sustainability goals, as staff carefully anchored helium-filled white lanterns above a normally staid conference chamber and participants balanced on noticeably higher heels than normally seen in UN corridors.
Enforcement of rights and a global harmonisation of systems look to be among the focal points of trademark and geographical indications policy in 2010. Significant activity will occur in these areas in Europe. But whether it is the setting up of a database for trademark registration, amendments to the Lisbon Treaty on the Protection of Appellation of Origin, or the evaluation of the European trademark system, efforts to improve current tools are showing at national and international levels.
The first public discussion of an expert report on how to finance the often costly process of research and development to create new medicines, vaccines and diagnostics needed by the poor to address diseases that disproportionately effect them began this week at the World Health Organization. There were immediate concerns about the last-minute release of the report’s full text and concerns from several governments that it came up short on critical areas, and it was decided that an informal consultation process will take place over the next few months. Meanwhile, World Health Organization Director General Margaret Chan said she has already begun an investigation to find out who leaked drafts of the expert group’s work to an international industry group in December.
The intellectual property system seems to be tight at the seams with a global overload of work for national IP offices and a backlog in patent requests. Further international cooperation and some adjustments are necessary to keep an efficient high quality IP system, according to speakers at a private-sector meeting in Geneva on 14-15 January.
The cultures of indigenous peoples have frequently been ignored when global standards on intellectual property were being set, a new United Nations report has stated.
Plus de 95 pour cent des œuvres publiées ne sont pas adaptées aux personnes déficientes visuelles, ont indiqué leurs représentants la semaine dernière, à l’Organisation Mondiale de la Propriété Intellectuelle (OMPI). Ils soutiennent qu’un accord prévoyant des exceptions au droit d’auteur pourrait remédier à cette pénurie de livres, en levant les restrictions portées par le droit d’auteur à la traduction d’œuvres protégées dans des formats adaptés, et en partageant ces traductions au-delà des frontières nationales.
A balancing of the rights of authors and consumers, the re-introduction of a private copying exception, a remixing permission and a new regulatory agency for copyright issues are among the core points the Brazilian Ministry of Culture has planned for the new copyright law. But at the Third Conference on Copyright and the Public Interest in São Paulo a month ago, the Ministry emphasised that the bits and pieces shown to the audience were not from an actual law draft ("anteprojeto") but only a preliminary proposal for formulating such a draft. The bill still has not been published to date. The delay in releasing the bill for public consultation now threatens the work of more than two years on the reform.
The Intellectual Property Watch Monthly Edition features top news on international IP policymaking, the latest on who is coming and going in the international IP community, news briefs and more. The December/January edition is now available for subscribers.