Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Negotiators at the World Intellectual Property Organization this week are struggling to make headway on a draft text of an international instrument for the protection of traditional cultural expressions, or folklore. And accusations began to fly that certain developed countries are not engaging in good faith to move negotiations along.
Just as the world of international intellectual property law and policy is ever-changing, so are the faces within it. Below you will find an updated list of the latest people news and IP moves across international organisations, national and regional governments, nonprofit organisations, and the private sector, from the first half of this year.
The Internal Audit and Oversight Division (IAOD) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is conducting an evaluation of the service provided by the WIPO secretariat in support of the committee on traditional knowledge and related issues.
Small-scale farmers and their role in food security are a “missing element” in the draft articles being reviewed at this week’s negotiations at WIPO, according to a briefing paper issued by the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO).
The process for the 2014 election of the director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization is now available. And according to sources, the incumbent may have some competition for the post.
Members of the World Intellectual Property Organization this week are attempting to advance 13-year-old negotiations on the protection of traditional cultural expressions (folklore) to a point where they can enter final high-level treaty negotiations. But some developed countries are putting up resistance to any instrument that would be legally binding, saying that it is “premature,” which could change the outcome of the negotiations.
World Intellectual Property Organization members are nearing conclusion of negotiations for an international instrument or instruments on issues critical to indigenous peoples, such as protection of traditional indigenous knowledge, practices and genetic resources. But the WIPO membership as a whole has been miserly when it comes to funding indigenous peoples’ participation in the process, and now many are in danger of being left out of the process.
The World Intellectual Property Organization’s proposed programme and budget for the next biennium faced some tough questioning from the UN agency’s member states last week. Meanwhile, WIPO is anticipating a series of treaty negotiations in the next two years.
The meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organization Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) that was scheduled for late July has been postponed until December.
The themes of innovation, collaboration, and policy coherence shared the spotlight during panel discussions at the 5 July technical symposium on Medical Innovation: Changing Business Models. The event was jointly hosted by the World Health Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization, and World Trade Organization.
The UN World Intellectual Property Organization is proposing to open five new regional offices around the world next year, with more envisioned in the future. In a move it says is in response to requests from its members, WIPO aims to open offices in China, Russia, the United States and two in unnamed African countries. And doing so will help defend the global intellectual property system from cyber attacks by the likes of Anonymous, it says.
The leaders of three top international organisations in Geneva last week discussed synergies in public health and called for increased collaboration and creativity to move medical innovation out of its quagmire of inefficiency. The opening session was marked by the head of the World Health Organization urging stakeholders to develop mechanisms to separate drug prices from costs of research and development. And the head of the GAVI Alliance, in the keynote address, discussed how patent thickets could impede access to vaccines.