Author: James Love

On February 26, 2011, the World Blind Union issued a statement announcing it would “suspend participation in the WIPO Stakeholder Platform and EU Stakeholder Dialogue projects, pending agreement at WIPO on a proper binding legal framework.” [See full statement below]. The WBU statement is expected to dramatically change the environment for considering a new WIPO treaty for persons who are blind or have other disabilities.

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Congressional Research Service reports are prepared in response to requests from members of congress. For decades, right to know groups have been asking that they be available online. The CRS describes itself as follows:

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Four Green/EFA MEPs (from four parties and four countries) have asked a follow-up question on ACTA and the Vienna Connection, trying to get at the “is the US bound?” issue.

Greens/EFA MEPs Christian Engström, Judith Sargentini, Sandrine Beliér and Jan Albrecht have asked the European Commission this follow-up question on ACTA and Vienna Convention:

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At the end of the month, Judit Rius will be leaving KEI and joining MSF in New York as U.S. Manager of MSF’s Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines. Judit has been with KEI since 2006, and from the beginning, contributed greatly to nearly every aspect of KEI’s work. We will miss her a lot. At MSF, Judit will work closely with another talented former KEI lawyer, Michelle Childs. We wish Judit well in her new position, and congratulate MSF on the appointment.

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After several days of negotiations, the 128th WHO Executive Board has accepted the nomination of Paul Herrling to the new WHO Consultative Expert Working Group on R&D Financing, despite the fact that Herrling is an executive of Novartis, and is the author of the IFPMA/Novartis/FRIND proposal and the co-author of the PDP Plus proposal, which will be considered by the CEWG.

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On Tuesday the 18th of January 2010,German Green MEP Franziska Keller tabled this Parliamentary question:

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At the end of the day on Monday, the 128 WHO Executive Board meeting took the agenda item for creation of a new R&D Financing consultative expert working group (CEWG). (Yesterday’s blog on this topic is here)

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Today the WHO is expected to take up the Report by the Secretariat on “the Establishment of a consultative expert working group on research and development: financing and coordination.” (link here).

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The following reports the number of Google hits using the search term “gates foundation,” with a site:domainname option, on January 7, 2011. The result is a count of the number of web pages (visible to Google) mentioning the Gates Foundation on a particular domain.

For example, the google search site:who.int “gates foundation” identified 5,940 pages on the who.int web site that have the exact phrase, “gates foundation.”