Author: James Love

The “commercial availability” issue looked like a mess this evening, as delegates emerged from closed* negotiations to provide two pages of proposals for text for Article D(3), which was intended to be a single sentence. I am attaching the text here. Hard to say how this will end up. Now there is some bracketed text that “reasonable terms” will include “interoperability, time and other terms” which I assume also includes prices. Continue Reading →

Today NGOs were given 3 minutes for an opening statement. This is the text I used. Jamie

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Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) is a non-profit organization concerned with human rights. KEI wishes the delegates luck on a successful outcome. We are grateful for the work by the Secretariat on this issue, from top to bottom.

We will discuss our concerns about the negotiations.

There is a disparity between the lofty language in this hall, and the efforts to narrow user rights taking place downstairs, in the closed meeting.

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On April 19, 2013, the US Chamber of Commerce wrote a letter to the USPTO to “express concerns about the ongoing meetings of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) regarding visually impaired persons (VIPs).

David Hirschmann, CEO of the Chamber’s GIPC, signed the letter

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The WTO TRIPS Council has just approved an extension of TRIPS Obligations for Least Developed Countries until July 1, 2021, a new eight year extension. The new extension comes with some restrictions, but provides more freedom than the previous extension, which had a widely criticized and now eliminated “no rollback” clause. The decision stops well short of what the LDCs had proposed.

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Much of the April negotiations on the treaty for copyright exceptions for persons with disabilities was spent discussing the issue of countries that are not members of the WTO, or the Berne Convention, or countries classified by the UN as least developed countries (LDCs), and currently not bound by the TRIPS agreement provisions on copyright.

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The agenda for the meeting is here: http://tacd-ip.org/archives/945
My slides are here.
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The drafting group has finished its work, and below is the “Final” text on the “Decisions Point” that will accompany the resolution on the CEWG work, it is very similar to the text from Friday, but stronger in some areas and perhaps not as good in some others. For example, on the topic of the finance mechanism, reference to “voluntary” has been eliminated.

Friday text: “demonstrate voluntary and sustainable financing mechanism.”
Saturday text: “propose and foster financing mechanisms including innovative, sustainable and pooled funding.”

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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.

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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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