Proposed conclusions to SCCR 26
See PDF attachment. Note that PDF has pages 2 and 3 out of order. Continue Reading
Author: James Love
United States’ Opening Statement on Exceptions and Limitations SCCR 26 December 18, 2013
This was delivered this morning, by Shira Perlmutter of USPTO.
United States’ Opening Statement on Exceptions and Limitations SCCR 26 December 18, 2013
* The United States starts with the recognition that exceptions and limitations are a critical element of a balanced and vibrant copyright law regime.
* A combination of strong protections for authors, and appropriate exceptions and limitations on their rights, together serve to further copyright’s goals of encouraging creativity, innovation, and learning.
Michelle K. Lee to become Deputy Director of the USPTO. A very high tech appointment (and that is a good thing)
USPTO has issued a press release, announcing the appointment of Michelle K. Lee as Deputy Director of the USPTO, beginning in January 13, 2014. Currently Lee is the Director of the USPTO’s Silicon Valley satellite office. The White House reportedly wanted to appoint Lee as the Director, but may have seen the Deputy position as less controversial. For the near future, Lee will be running the USPTO, and will be the most sophisticated person as regards technology to do so, at least in our memory. According to the USPTO Press Release:
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STATEMENT OF THE MINISTERS AND HEADS OF DELEGATION FOR THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP COUNTRIES
STATEMENT OF THE MINISTERS AND HEADS OF DELEGATION FOR THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP COUNTRIES
December 10, 2013
Singapore
We, the Ministers and Heads of Delegation for Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam, have just completed a four-day Ministerial meeting in Singapore where we have made substantial progress toward completing the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.
Joe Stiglitz writes open letter to TPP negotiators
Professor Joseph Stiglitz has written an open letter to the TPP negotiators, asking that they resist proposals to weaken consumer rights in intellectual property. The letter identifies 12 specific “grave risks” in the IP Chapter, and calls upon negotiators to publish the investor state dispute resolution text.
Areas where USTR has shown some flexibility on the TPP IPR Chapter
USTR recently asked KEI if there were areas in the IP Chapter where we approved of the positions taken by USTR, and the answer is, yes. Given how critical we have been about the text, I will mention a few here.
USTR now “supports a more flexible approach under which partners could retain reasonable patent pre-grant opposition procedures.” This is welcome, and useful.
Katy Athersuch of MSF reports from WHO Experts meeting on R&D demonstration projects
Rich, and not rich, in the TPP, as regards certain IPR obligations involving medical technologies
On November 28, 2013, I wrote a blog about the problems in using the World Bank’s definition of high income, in the specifc context of a proposal by the United States to use this as a measure of which countries in the TPP should have lower standards for intellectual property rights on medical inventions. (See: https://www.keionline.org/node/1834).
Here a different metric is presented, based upon relative incomes, benchmarked against the five highest income countries in the TPP with a population of more than 1 million persons.
2009: Sign-on Letter – Against life + 70 year copyright term in the TPP
This is sign-on letter — Against life + 70 year copyright term in the TPP. See end of letter for details on how to sign.
<-------------------begin letter----------- December 9, 2013 Dear TPP negotiators, In a December 7-10 meeting in Singapore you will be asked to endorse a binding obligation to grant copyright protection for 70 years after the death of an author. We urge you to reject the life + 70 year term for copyright. Continue Reading
TPP: Senator Hatch to USTR, 12 years of IPR for Biologics test data, no restrictions on cross border data flows
In a December 2, 2013 letter, Senator Orrin Hatch wrote to USTR’s Michael Froman, suggesting TPP exclude any countries that do not meet “high levels of ambition.” According to Hatch, these high ambitions include agreeing to 12 years of exclusive rights for IPR in biologic drug test data, and the elimination of barriers to cross border data flows (a privacy issue). A copy of the Hatch letter is attached below.
The timing of the Hatch letter is designed to pressure countries meeting in Singapore on December 7-10 in the TPP negotiation, on these two contentious issues.