This is a semi-live blog that will be edited during the day.
It’s Wed, September 23rd, and WIPO is winding up a relatively boring two days of a high level Ministerial segment. Many delegates felt this was poorly organized, with notices going out fairly late, and not much preliminary work or focus. Tomorrow begins the more substantive agenda.
Every year at the end of September, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) holds a General Assembly (GA). The GA hears reports from all WIPO committees, approves budgets and top staff appointments, and sets the agenda for the next year. This year’s GA started today, with a large number of patent and copyright office heads, trade negotiators and NGOs in attendance.
In the run up to WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights meeting from December 14 to December 18, 2009 (SCCR 19), there is a spate of activity in Europe, Egypt, India and the United States related to the right to read, a treaty for reading disabled persons, orphan works, limitations and exceptions to copyright and norm setting. Continue Reading
In a February 2009 article, I described why we need a Word Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaty for people with reading disabilities and why the US delegation at WIPO should support the WBU proposal and even become a leading force promoting it in its new form, a proposal by the governments of Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay tabled at WIPO in May 2009. Continue Reading
For several years, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) has been working on mechanisms to implement a 1986 UN Resolution on the “Right to Development.” To this end, the HRC has created a Working Group on the Right to Development, and a High Level Task Force On The Implementation Of The Right To Development.
This note concerns two areas of policy concerning humanitarian uses of patents. (1), a recommended exception to patent rights for humanitarian uses, and (2), the licensing of patents for humanitarian uses. Both examples focus on access to essential medical technologies.… Continue Reading
Date: September 10, 2009
On September 10, 2009 KEI hosted a brownbag lunch to discuss the scope of patentable subject matter, focusing specifically on the implications for life-science patents of the Supreme Court’s forthcoming review of the Bilski Federal Circuit opinion. This is the first time since 1981 that the US Supreme Court will address the limits of patentable subject matter.
The key U.S. statue on this issue is Section 101 of the patent law:
35 USC 101. Inventions patentable
On July 6, 2009, a report of the the U.S.-Japan Regulatory Reform and Competition Policy Initiative was presented to President Obama and Prime Minister Aso of Japan. The report provides an insight into the degree that the U.S. government tries to influence prices for medicines and medical devices in foreign markets. Here, as in other foreign markets, the U.S. government seeks to raise prices, and to give industry an even greater role in setting the prices for their products.
According to a report by Duff Wilson in the Sunday New York Times, Much of PhRMA’s $150 million in advertising will be spent pushing Senator Baucus’s version of the health “reform” legislation.
USTR has a system I was not that familiar with. For documents the public can’t see, USTR provides access under an NDA to private sector “experts” they want to consult. On Friday I was told by USTR:
“We’ve consulted with an array of experts from various IP and tech industries and associations and NGOs in the process of deliberation regarding a US proposal on one section of the agreement.”