[Random-bits] Huffington Post: A few important stories that are not news (in the US)

[James Love]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-love/a-few-important-stories-t_b_109122.html

A few important stories that are not news (in the US)

Posted June 25, 2008 | 10:22 AM (EST)

A blog on the news that is not reported in the US could be much
longer. This is only about a few items involving global intellectual
property negotiations.

The World Intellectual Property Organization

Beginning in 2004, the World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO), the specialized UN agency dealing with patents, copyrights and
other types of intellectual property rights, underwent a huge
upheaval. Once almost entirely a tool of special interests in the
pharmaceutical, entertainment and publishing industries, WIPO is
emerging as forum for real debates over global intellectual property
policy. Proposals for ill conceived treaties on patent harmonization
and the protection of broadcasting organizations were blocked, the
first by developing countries, and the second by a coalition of
developing countries, civil society NGOs, and innovative businesses.

In 2007, WIPO adopted a far reaching and widely praised "Development
Agenda," with 45 recommendations that redefined and expanded the
agency mission to include a more balanced and modern approach to both
access and the support of innovation and creativity.

Earlier this year the WIPO DG was forced to agree to resign by the
fall, over misconduct. A tentative election for a successor was
recently held, and the new WIPO DG will be Francis Gurry from
Australia, a highly regarded expert who now heads the WIPO patent
section.

The WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR),
having rejected a new treaty that would have given broadcasting and
webcasting organizations a property right in content they merely
transmit, is now redefining its mission. First up is an agenda item
involving limitations and exceptions to copyrights, including a
possible treaty for the visually impaired, to make it easier to
publish materials across border that are accessible to the global
blind community.

This week in Geneva the WIPO Standing Committee on Patents (SCP) is
holding its first meeting in two years, in an attempt to create a new
work program on patents. The meeting is very important. Right now the
SCP is considering agenda items in four areas, including:

1) Information on patents (Patent information). This would include
"dissemination of patent information (including the registration of
licenses) and a "database on search and examination reports".

2) Exceptions and limitations which would include exceptions from
patentable subject matter, limitations to the rights, research
exemption and compulsory licenses.

3) Patents and standards.

4) Client-attorney privilege.

Of these, items 2 and 3 are particularly important. The meeting
continues until Friday.

World Health Organization

The World Health Organization has been engaged in intense negotiations
over public health, innovation and intellectual property since 2003,
and in May adopted a widely praised 48 page documentt that set out a
program through 2015 dealing with innovation and access (i+a) for
medical technologies. The new WHO approach will include creative ways
of dealing with the support of both innovation and access, including
importantly an emphasis on "the de-linkage of the costs of research
and development and the price of health products." Among the
controversial initiatives backed by the new WHO plan are the use of
prizes to stimulate R&D, patent pools to obtain licenses that enable
generic competition in developing countries, and discussions on a new
biomedical R&D treaty.

The WHO is setting up a new task force to address certain elements of
the the plan, and will consider proposals from member states,
including these new proposals from Barbados and Bolivia to create
several prize funds to support innovation in areas such as the
development of new diagnostic tests for TB, or new priority medicines
and vaccines (including antibiotics).

ACTA
Japan, the US and the European Union are holding secret negotiations
on a new intellectual property right enforcement treaty, misleadingly
named the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. This negotiation is
making headlines in Canada and is reported in Europe, but not by the
US newspapers and wire services. We can't even get from the USTR a
copy of the agenda of the secret meetings, or names of the negotiators.