PhRMA giving more to democrats these days
According to the WSJ today PhRMA is spending $13.2 million in an “ad buy to prop up 28 Congressional candidates, many of them vulnerable and all but three of them Democrats.” The Journal points out
Author: James Love
World Blind Union asks WIPO to consider treaty for reading disabled persons
On October 28, 2008, Chris Friend of the World Blind Union sent a letter to WIPO DG Francis Gurry, with a proposal for a “WIPO treaty for Improved Access for Blind, Visually Impaired and other Reading Disabled Persons.” The case for the treaty is explained in the WBU letter.
Additional information on this topic is available from the KEI web site here.
Dr. Yusuf Hamied at DNDi’s Geneva offices
[img_assist|nid=147|title=James Love and Dr. Yusuf K. Hameid of CIPLA, at DNDi Geneva offices, September 2008|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=427] Continue Reading
Association of American Publishers worried about Larry Lessig
PhRMA comments on ACTA: ISP Liability, Parallel Trade and Generic APIs
These are a few quick points about the PhRMA submission.
1. PhRMA asks that ACTA “Establish liability for Internet Service Providers and Other Operators that Facilitate Trade in Counterfeit Medical Products.”
This is potentially quite an important and controversial recommendation. PhRMA wants to make telecommunications companies liable if one of their customers sells counterfeit products.
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What is a Counterfeit?
On Tuesday, 20 May 2008, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia and Tunisia introduced a draft resolution (A61/A/Conf. Paper No 1) on counterfeiting.
While counterfeiting medicines is an important public health problem, and as traditionally defined, is a criminal enterprise that should be subject to tough legal sanctions, the resolution is problematic.
Open licensing vs Monopoly Controlled Supply
One of the most important battles being waged both inside and outside of the IGWG concerns the nature of competition for the supply of inexpensive medicines and vaccines.
The large pharma companies with well-known brands and big marketing and distribution systems want to marginalize developing country generic suppliers, as actual or potential competitors. This plays out in various ways. For example:
Journalists who wrote about US trade disputes before the 1999 Gore Zaps
In a blog posted today on the Huffington Post, I could have, should have, elaborated a bit on the few U.S. journalists who had written about the trade disputes involving patents on medicines, before AIDS activists began their zaps of Gore’s presidential campaign in June of 1999.
2002-8: WIPO discussions on access for blind, visually impaired and other reading disabled persons
During the current SCCR 17 discussions on copyright limitations and exceptions, some delegates are unfamiliar with the longstanding efforts to engage WIPO delegates in this issue. Here are some rough notes of *some* of the times when this issue has… Continue Reading
Google’s cell phone prize
There have been many new stories about Google’s new prize for cell phone applications (Such as this one).
This is how the program is described by Google: