Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Three major international organisations in Geneva dealing with health, trade and intellectual property rights will come together next month to look at how innovative technologies can help to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals related to health.
The United States, possibly working with like-minded countries, is working to prevent the further spread among international organisations in Geneva of recommendations put forward by the 2016 United Nations High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines, considering them to be ideological driven and dangerous to economic growth. The comments were made by a US official speaking to a recent US industry event in Washington DC involving many of the US intellectual property attachès, at which two attachés from Geneva described latest developments and strategy for the coming year. A key message from attachès to industry: come to Geneva and engage, starting with this week’s Executive Board meeting at the World Health Organization.
A network of civil society organisations chose the birthplace of the World Trade Organization, Marrakesh, to hold a global summit on intellectual property and access to medicines this week. Part of the summit focused on stringent IP measures in free trade agreements in particular with the European Union, introducing patent term extension and data exclusivity periods.
The recently published book Coalitions and Compliance by Professor Ken Shadlen of the London School of Economics examines how international changes can reconfigure domestic politics. Since the late 1980s, developing countries have been subject to intense pressures regarding intellectual property rights. These pressures have been exceptionally controversial in the area of pharmaceuticals. Historically, fearing the economic and social costs of providing private property rights over knowledge, developing countries did not allow drugs to be patented. Now they must do so, an obligation with significant implications for industrial development and public health. This book analyses different forms of compliance with this new imperative in Latin America, comparing the politics of pharmaceutical patenting in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. The book focuses on two periods of patent politics: initial conflicts over how to introduce drug patents, and then subsequent conflicts over how these new patent systems function. Intellectual Property Watch recently conducted a Q&A with Prof. Shadlen, which appears below.
A few weeks after the failure of the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting in Buenos Aires to cut deals advancing issues from fisheries to e-commerce, some governments and trade experts around the world are concerned about the WTO’s future. Meanwhile, a couple of intellectual property-related provisions moved ahead after the ministerial without change.
What IP-Watch stories were readers reading most in 2017, and what does it say about the state of global intellectual property policy? In this article, we look at the most-trafficked stories of last year, and make a few assumptions. Asia, Europe, trade, health. These were the top targets of interest to readers among our offerings. Interestingly, despite all the sound and fury in Washington, our coverage there was not at the top of the list. Even more interestingly, neither was our extensive and world-leading coverage of the World Intellectual Property Organization.
The mysterious death last week of Canadian billionaire Barry Sherman and his wife has raised many questions. For some, one question is what impact it will have on pharmaceutical competition in Canada, as his giant generic medicines company Apotex was seen as making a mark in access to medicines. It was also recalled that the company is the only one to have used an obscure provision of a World Trade Organization intellectual property agreement aimed at making more affordable medicines available in least developed countries.
The Internet Governance Forum Dynamic Coalition on Trade and the Internet, a group formed in 2016, held its formal inaugural meeting today and adopted a resolution on transparency in trade negotiations, in particular on trade rules that affect the online and digital environment.
Who does not like to have the possibility to shop online, or benefit from online services? No one disputes the advantage of the digital age, but in a world in which a very small number of actors, such as Google and Facebook, hosted by rich countries, reap most of the advertising benefits, developing countries are wary of binding rules which would only serve to enhance the digital and economic divide, according to speakers on an opening panel today at this week’s Internet Governance Forum.
After two decades of intellectual property regimes in trade agreements, one could have some second thoughts, according to a number of panellists at the Trade and Sustainable Development Symposium, organised by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) and held alongside the 11th World Trade Organization Ministerial in Buenos Aires, Argentina this week.