Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The UN World Intellectual Property Organization today announced its concern over the effect on trademark protection of the current launch of over 1,000 new internet domains by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
Japanese small and medium-sized venture companies and micro enterprises will receive a reduction on patent filing costs under the national "Industrial Competitiveness Enhancement Act" as of 1 April.
“Intellectual property, in general, is in a growth mode, and in a growth mode which is considerably in excess of either the national GDP growth rates or the world GDP growth rates,” World Intellectual Property Organisation Director General Francis Gurry said today.
The World Intellectual Property Organization committee on trademarks will address three main issues next week. Among them, delegates will look to advance a draft treaty facilitating the international registration of industrial designs, and try to agree on how to address technical assistance in that draft treaty. In addition, the United States has a proposal to invite into the committee discussions on a proposed revision of the Lisbon Agreement on the Protection of Appellations of Origins, and Jamaica is pursuing its effort at a stronger international soft law for the protection of country names against use as trademarks.
The World Trade Organization and World Intellectual Property Organization are jointly offering a course this week on all aspects of intellectual property to a group of officials from developing countries and countries in transition, the WTO has said.
Incumbent Francis Gurry of Australia today was nominated to be the director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization until 2020, with WIPO members to make their final decision on 8 May. In his return to office, Gurry told reporters today he wants to focus on the digital marketplace, improving the organisation’s performance, changing geopolitics, and to steer journalists away from writing about allegations of wrongdoing at WIPO.
After a bumpy road, the director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization today was recommended by the WIPO Coordination Committee to be returned to office for another six-year term.
World Intellectual Property Organization members this morning held a first round of voting for the director general candidate to lead the UN organisation for the next six years. The top three candidates, from Australia, Nigeria and Panama, will advance to the second round to be held this afternoon.
After two-and-a-half days of non-stop information sharing on ways to build respect for intellectual property and enforce IP rights, members of the World Intellectual Property Organization could not agree on the future agenda of the committee on enforcement.
An executive committee of nearly half the World Intellectual Property Organization membership will tomorrow, 6 March, select the leader of the key UN organisation for the next six years. And it is still hard to predict whether the incumbent will return.
New business models for reducing markets for counterfeit and pirated goods were presented by speakers at the WIPO Advisory Committee on Enforcement this week, including voluntary mechanisms and graduated responses. But prices on brand name products was a little-explored issue during the presentations, only underlined as a possible factor of piracy by one developing country delegation.
Raising awareness on the value of intellectual property and preventive actions to fight counterfeiting particularly among younger users was among the strategies presented by speakers at the World Intellectual Property Organization committee on enforcement of IP rights this week.