Today Krista and I attended a “stakeholder consultation stakeholder consultation regarding the implementation of the World Health Organization’s Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework.” The meeting was chaired by Jonathan Margolis, the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Science, Space and Health in the Department of State’s Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs.
In Washington, DC there is a large and growing influence industry. One element of this industry is the thousands of people who register as lobbyists with the Congress. Because of the way disclosure rules are written, this is only a fraction of the persons who are actually employed to influence the Congress or the Executive Branch. Continue Reading
In August, KEI provided comments to USTR regarding the entry of Mexico and Canada into the TPP negotiations. (https://www.keionline.org/node/1542). Today is the public hearing. Right now there are about 35 people in the audience, and a panel of 9 persons from various agencies hearing the testimonies. There are only 10 witnesses in today’s hearing, and only three, KEI, PhRMA and IIPA, are speaking on IPR issues.
Yesterday I wrote about the USPTO blocking KEI and many other NGOs, blogs and news organizations from their public wifi service. The USPTO says this practice has been discontinued, as of last evening (more here: /node/1548) but I found the issue interesting enough to follow up a bit. What I have found is more troubling than the initial case described yesterday.
Update: At 5 pm the USPTO called and said that the public access wifi network was using a filter, provided by a contractor, to block “political activist” sites. This filter was not used by the network providing Internet access for the USPTO staff. After our meeting, the USPTO reviewed its policies, and has removed the filter. USPTO says the filter was implemented by a contractor, and no one we talked to at USPTO was aware of who was being blocked. In any event, the filter has been removed.
While the GOP and Democratic conventions highlight the differences between the parties, there are some bipartisan issues, and one of the biggest is taking care of corporate interests.
The GOP platform mentions China 15 times, including these passages:
Our serious trade disputes, especially China’s failure to enforce international standards for the protection of intellectual property and copyrights, as well as its manipulation of its currency, call for a firm response from a new Republican Administration. . .
The 1980 Bayh-Dole Act is named after two former US Senators, Birch Bayh and Bob Dole. In 2002 both claimed the Bayh-Dole Act march-in provisions were not intended to address cases where prices for inventions are unreasonable, and Senator Bayh repeated this view during a 2004 march-in case involving Abbott patents on ritonavir.
Among the provisions of the Act that suggest otherwise are the following:
A story today by Adam Behsudi in the trade publication, Inside U.S. Trade, quotes from ISP industry sources who basically defend the USTR position, which is the worst among the TPP negotiating countries. Taken as a whole, we read the ISP positions as both weak and incredibly damaging, as they are undercutting real opposition to the USTR proposal by non-US governments in the TPP negotiations. Continue Reading
The 1967 Stockholm Revision of the Berne Convention Protocol Regarding Developing Countries This could be referred to as the forgotten access to knowledge treaty. The text of the 1967 Protocol for Developing Countries in the Stockholm Revision of the Berne… Continue Reading