Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Museums usually gather heterogeneous objects, coming in various forms, and engage in different activities in relation to those objects. With the advance of information technologies, museums have to adapt and consider the digitisation of their collections, which brings copyright questions, according to a study presented yesterday at the World Intellectual Property Organization.
On the side of this week’s World Intellectual Property Organization Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), the International Authors Forum held a side event on 7 December. Speakers underlined the importance of copyright for authors so that they can make a living from their writing, and warned about ill-defined fair use in copyright law.
The World Intellectual Property Organization committee on copyright opened today with an agenda of a potential treaty to protect broadcasting organisations against piracy, and copyright limitations and exceptions for libraries, archives, educational and research institutions, as well as for persons with disabilities other than visual impairment.
Two days of informal consultations last week did not bring World Intellectual Property Organization members to agreement on a work programme for the next session of its committee on the law of patents. Developed and developing countries have different views on the work of the committee, with developing countries seeking work on patent on health, and limitations and exceptions to patent rights, while developed countries are more interested in work-sharing between patent offices and protecting the confidentiality of information between patent advisers and their clients.
A seminar on patents and availability of medicines in developing countries yesterday considered whether patents constitute a barrier to access. For the private sector, patents are essential to the innovation system, for others they maintain high prices and should be licensed for easier access. Beyond patents, biologics seem to be taking over the pharmaceutical industry, and the complexity of manufacturing biosimilars might well leave traditional generic manufacturers by the wayside.
Separately, a side event at WIPO looked at IP management strategies in private-public partnerships in agriculture and health technologies.
The United Nations Development Programme joined forces with the World Blind Union to prepare a new report aimed at facilitating Asia-Pacific countries’ ratification of a treaty designed to help visually-impaired people access special format books.
Latin American and Caribbean countries have tabled a new proposal for next week’s meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organization committee on copyright. The proposal calls for analysing copyright related to the digital environment.
The African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) recently held two top organ meetings in Lusaka, Zambia, to debate the organisation’s strategic plan for 2016-2020.
The World Intellectual Property Organization committee on patent law is meeting this week, including a half-day seminar on the relationship between patent systems and the availability of medicines in developing countries and least-developed countries.
The chair of the World Intellectual Property Organization copyright committee has issued a new consolidated text on definitions, what should be protected, and the rights to be granted to broadcasters. The text comes in the lead-up to the next meeting of the committee.
The World Intellectual Property Organization committee on enforcement concluded yesterday with an agreement on the future work of the committee. The adoption of this programme was heavily discussed during the week, reflecting the different approaches on enforcement of intellectual property rights among countries.
Alongside this week's meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organization committee on enforcement, an event featured a former South African Supreme Court judge presenting his views on IP enforcement. There is a need to go for the “big fish,” he said, and to bring balance in sanctions and enforcement procedures. He also described courts as finding that exceptions to copyright are a public right.