On May 17, 2013, DG trade held a public briefing on the IP Chapter for the TTIP and the E/Japan trade agreement. The TTIP discussion was led by Pedro Velasco Martins, the Deputy Head of Unit for Intellectual Property and Public Procurement. Unlike some recent USTR briefings, which were off-the-record, this was on-the-record meeting, and DG Trade even displayed a suggested twitter hash tag.
Below is a PDF from my presentation at the May 16, 2013 event in the EU Parliament on the Economic Crisis and Access to Medicines in Europe. While the main purpose of my talk was to discuss delinkage, I began with some data on the EU market and R&D outlays. I have pulled out one figure and two tables from the presentation and offer some comments here.
The figure below simulates the shape of the demand curve for Europe, if one assumes a constant elasticity of income for products, and insurance in each market.
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| Markus Beyrer thinks blind people should not have robust copyright exceptions, because it might set a precedent for patents on health or climate technologies |
On May 10, 2013, a very revealing freedom of information request was made available from the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO). The request had been filed on April 14, 2013 by the journalist Glyn Moody, for:
A PDF version of our comments is available here.
People have until midnight May 10, 2013 to file comments, here:
http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=USTR-2013-0019-0001
This is the table of contents.
Comments on the Administration’s Intention to Enter Into Negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) Agreement
Response to Docket No. USTR-2013-0019
Introduction
Transparency
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Note, we are adding some video clips from the meeting here:
On May 13, 2013, KEI will host a 12:30 to 2:30 brown bag lunch for a discussion of the WIPO Treaty for the Blind negotiations. It will be possible to attend in person, or follow the meeting on the telephone.
On April 15, 2013, the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) sent a letter to Teresa Stanek Rea, the Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and the Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, setting out the IPO “concerns” about the proposed WIPO treaty for persons who are blind or visually impaired. (Copy here).
On April 26, 2013 I attended a half day meeting on “A Human Rights Approach to Intellectual Property and Access to Medicines” organized by the Yale Law School and the Yale School of Public Health. These are notes from my interventions on behalf of KEI.
1. KEI does a lot of work on intellectual property rights that has impact on human rights. We do not always give prominence to human rights law or the language of human rights, although at times and in the right context, it can be important to do so.
Below is the PhRMA press release on the Special 301 Report.
Key points in the PhRMA release:
* PhRMA “dismayed that USTR did not grant an out-of-cycle review for India.” PhRMA claims that India decisions involving German owned Bayer and Swiss owned Novartis “disproportionately impacted U.S. biopharmaceutical companies.” (Perhaps PhRMA could have said, companies that have ownership claims on the US government).
Today USTR held a one hour “listening session” with several Washington, DC public interest groups. The topic was the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the European Union.