On March 4, 2010, the Senate Judiciary Committee released its new “compromise bill” on patent reform. Senator Leahy described the objectives of the bill as follows:*
“we wanted to improve patent quality and the operations at the [Patent and Trademark Office], and address runaway damage awards that were harming innovation. We are close to a compromise that will address these issues.”
On January 6, 2010, Senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to the USTR asking a number of questions about the U.S. negotiating objectives in ACTA. On February 28, 2010, USTR responded. The USTR response focused mostly on the official U.S. “asks,” rather than the state of the negotiating text, which also reflects also the views of other parties. For this reason, the USTR letter to Wyden only tells part of the story about what ACTA may do.
On 12 February 2010, the Council of the European Union distributed a table drawn up by the Commission Services, outlining the positions of various counties regarding civil enforcement and the special requirements relating to the Internet. A copy of this 44 page document was leaked on March 1, 2010, and is attached to this blog. A text version of the table is available from swpat.org.
KEI is one of several public health groups working with Sean Flynn on filing comments in the current U.S.T.R. request for comments on the Special 301 process (Federal Register Notice USTR-2010-0003-0129). In addition, KEI filed these comments:
KEI comments on Special 301
18 February 2010
KEI provides the following comments regarding the 2010 Special 301 Review, including but not limited to the Identification of Countries Under Section 182 of the Trade Act of 1974.
Our comments include the following points:
The use of the patent system is quite different from country to country. The following table provides the number of WIPO PCT patent filings, by country of origin, from January 2005 to November 2009, per million residents.* The source of the data on PCT filings is the February 2010 version of the WIPO Statistics Database. (WIPO notes the 2009 data are provisional and incomplete). The PCT counts are based on the international filing date and the country of residence of the first named applicant.
A February 8, 2010 WIPO press release states:
International patent filings under WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) fell by 4.5% in 2009 with sharper than average declines experienced by some industrialized countries and growth in a number of East Asian countries.
The following are slides from the KEI side event on patents, standards and remedies to infringement. These include the slides used by Thomas Vinje and Karsten Gerloff, and a text handout and slides from James Love. Continue Reading
Dear Chairman,
Congratulations to the Chair and the Vice Chairs for their elections.
KEI is an NGO that focuses on new thinking about innovation, and also the protection of consumers.
Our comments will focus on the proposal by Brazil to address the SCP work program on patent limitations and exceptions, as set out in SCP/14/7.
KEI supports all of the elements of work set out in paragraphs 25 to 27 of SCP/14/7, which we see as logical and useful steps to begin an empirically based discussion of patent limitations and exceptions, focused on practical concerns.
Before The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)
Regarding the development of policies to deliver public access to published results of taxpayer-funded research
[DOCID:fr31de09-73]
COMMENTS BY KNOWLEDGE ECOLOGY INTERNATIONAL
Knowledge Ecology International appreciates the opportunity to submit the following reply comments in connection with the Notice of Inquiry regarding enhancing public access to archived publications resulting from research funded by Federal science and technology agencies published in the Federal Register on December 31, 2009.
The World Health Organization (WHO) Executive Board will soon consider the Executive Summary of the Report of the Expert Working Group on Research and Development Financing, a document, formally identified as EB 126/6 Add.1.
In the section of the report on “Funding allocation proposals,” the EWG considers two types of innovation inducement prizes, including
31 (c) milestone prizes; and
31 (d) end-prizes (cash)