Original news and analysis on international IP policy
KAMPALA - As the East African Community nears full revival, a bloc market covering five countries with a population of about 145 million people has emerged. But the member countries face another challenge: they have different levels of intellectual property rights protection.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has launched an initiative with other agencies aimed at expanding global access to health products such as medicines. But the Fund has had some explaining to do about the initiative, which some say could encompass a plan to allow different prices based on national income levels.
Australia yesterday took the unusual move of agreeing to the first request by Indonesia to establish a World Trade Organization dispute panel against it. The ready acceptance of the panel request was an attempt by Australia to bring the some or all of the five separate cases against its tobacco plain packaging law together for resource reasons and to protect the integrity of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism, it said in a statement to the Dispute Settlement Body.
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.
The South Centre, the Geneva-based intergovernmental organisation of developing countries, yesterday issued a statement calling on World Trade Organization members to oppose United States pressure against developing countries, and India in particular, over their intellectual property laws.
An article published in the March 2014 issue of the World Health Organisation Bulletin discusses the evolving issue of access to medicines in Africa.
World Trade Organization members at the WTO intellectual property committee this week held fast to positions on longstanding issues, but engaged in discussions on issues such as innovation in relation to universities, and so-called “non-violation complaints” against countries that may cause harm to another country but don’t violate a WTO rule. Also discussed was the ongoing dispute over plain packaging requirements for tobacco products.
Efforts to update European Union trademark law have slowed amid political differences and squabbles over some provisions of the reform package, representatives from the European Commission (EC), European Parliament and trademark community say. Contrary to the wishes of the EC and lawmakers, the legislation will not be completed before European parliamentary elections in May.
The intersection of biotechnology and intellectual property continues to be a hot topic across the globe. From the patenting of certain plant varieties to human genes, to biodiversity and food security, to genetic resources, countries from developing to developed are attempting to navigate often blurred lines in terms of what can and cannot be patented, what should - and shouldn’t - be patented, and protecting innovators from farmers to plant breeders to drug manufacturers.
Technology transfer for green technologies, and the compliance with international trade rules of plain packaging for tobacco products will once again be on the agenda of the World Trade Organization committee on intellectual property next week. A new agenda item on university technology partnerships is also expected to be discussed.
Daniele Dionisio writes: Hopes that a comprehensive global health goal could be reached by 2035 are hardly credible with the load of unresolved issues still on the table. This article turns the spotlight on much-debated relevant questions that were left out or under-scrutinised in a recently published Lancet report.
The Quaker UN Office in Geneva has announced two new publications on intellectual property, agriculture, food and biological diversity.