Chile.Intellectual Property for Development:Access & Diffusion of registered knowledg.

Operation that will strengthen the National Institute of Intellectual Property (INAPI), the Chilean industrial property register (patents, trademarks and desings) capabilities to digitalize, transfer and diffuse all registered knowledge available, as well as support the optimization of its administrative structure.

CH-T1114 : Intellectual Property for Development: Access & Diffusion of registered knowledgh

New Delhi Workshop on Standards and Intellectual Property Rights, 19-20 December 2011

ITU-T Newslog.ITU is organizing a Workshop on Standards and Intellectual Property Rights in New Delhi, India, 19-20 December 2011. Taking place at the HMR Institute of Technology and Management, the event will be hosted by the Global ICT Standardization Forum for India (GISFI), and will be followed by the seventh GISFI meeting at the same venue, 21-22 December 2011.

One of the key aims of standardization is to enable the efficient ‘globalization’ of ICT products and solutions. IPR issues must be taken into consideration when developing standards, a process demanding a balance of varying stakeholder interests; such as those of patent holders, standards implementers and standards’ end-users. Additionally, SDOs frequently encounter copyright issues relating to the incorporation of software in standards.

Such patent and copyright issues are the subject of global debate, and the workshop is being convened to provide a forum for discussions relating to the inclusion of patented technology and software in standards. International experts from both the public and private sector will provide an overview of these issues and share their insights on the present nature of the issue and how it is likely to progress in the future.

Participation in the workshop is open to ITU Member States, Sector Members, Associates, Academia and to any individual from a country part of ITU’s membership. Fellowships are available upon request, please contact tsbworkshops@itu.int.

Draft decisions agreed on poorest nations’ intellectual property and ‘non-violation’

WTO: 2011 NEWS ITEMS. 17 November 2011.INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: FORMAL MEETING. WTO members meeting as the TRIPS (intellectual property) Council have reached consensus agreement on two draft decisions for their ministers to adopt in the 15-17 December 2011 Geneva Ministerial Conference.

Ministers are now expected to ask the council to consider extending the mid-2013 deadline for least developed countries to implement intellectual property protection under the WTO agreement. They are also expected to agree that their countries will continue to refrain from bringing “non-violation” cases to the WTO dispute settlement system for another two years.

Least developed countries’ transition

The least developed countries are seeking more time in order to identify their needs for assistance, to use the assistance to beef up their ability to protect intellectual property, and ultimately to protect it. They were represented in the discussions by their general coordinator, Bangladesh, and their TRIPS coordinator, Angola, who want ministers to make a political statement, and noted that only six countries have submitted their priority needs (Sierra Leone, Uganda, Bangladesh, Rwanda, Tanzania and Senegal).

A number of countries have said they support extending the deadline, some adding that this would be in order to help least developed countries eventually protect intellectual property fully, which in turn will encourage economic activity.

The least developed countries’ original 2005 deadline for protecting intellectual property under the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement was extended in that year until 1 July 2013.

The 2005 decision also required the least developed countries to identify their priorities for technical assistance in intellectual property protection, for developed countries to respond effectively, and for the WTO, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and other agencies to strengthen their co-operation on technical assistance and other issues.

(The deadline does not apply to pharmaceutical patents. The 2001 Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health extended the period for least developed countries to comply with provisions on pharmaceuticals to 2016.)

The draft. Informal consultations among a small group of countries led to a shorter draft for the Ministerial Conference: “Ministers invite the TRIPS Council to give full consideration to a duly motivated request from Least Developed Country Members for an extension of their transition period under Article 66.1 of the TRIPS Agreement, and report thereon to the WTO Ninth Ministerial Conference.”

Assuming ministers adopt the decision, the issue will return to the TRIPS Council.

What the transition means. Least developed countries, like all WTO members are bound by the TRIPS Agreement. But the agreement includes transition periods for countries to delay protecting intellectual property.

This means that as far as the WTO is concerned, least developed countries still do not have to protect trademarks, patents, copyright, geographical indications and other types of intellectual property. But if they do — and several do provide at least some kind of protection — then they have to comply with the TRIPS Agreement’s non-discrimination clauses.

More here.

Non-violation disputes

WTO agreements allow countries to bring cases against each other if one feels that another government’s action or a specific situation has deprived it of an expected benefit, even if no agreement has been violated.

But opinions differ among WTO members on whether non-violation cases are feasible in intellectual property. The TRIPS Agreement contains a temporary restraint (a “moratorium”) on bringing non-violation complaints. This has been extended several times, more recently from one Ministerial Conference to the next.

The TRIPS Council has now agreed to propose that ministers agree to a further

extension until the ninth Ministerial Conference in 2013.

The US and Switzerland in particular continue to argue that there is a place for non-violation complaints in TRIPS, but they are also not blocking consensus on the moratorium.

The draft on “TRIPS non-violation and situation complaints” for the Ministerial Conference says: “We take note of the work done by the Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights pursuant to our Decision of 2 December 2009 on ‘TRIPS Non-Violation and Situation Complaints’ (WT/L/783), and direct it to continue its examination of the scope and modalities for complaints of the types provided for under subparagraphs 1(b) and 1(c) of Article XXIII of GATT 1994 and make recommendations to our next Session, which we have decided to hold in 2013. It is agreed that, in the meantime, Members will not initiate such complaints under the TRIPS Agreement.”

More here.

Chairperson: Mr Martin Glass, standing in for Ambassador Federico A González of Paraguay

Next

TRIPS Council regular meetings (could change):

2012

• Tuesday-Wednesday 28–29 February
• Tuesday-Wednesday 5–6 June
• Tuesday-Wednesday 6–7 November

The World Intellectual Property Report 2011-The Changing Face of Innovation

WIO. Geneva, November 14, 2011 PR/2011/700     The World Intellectual Property Report 2011- The Changing Face of Innovation – a new WIPO publication – describes how ownership of intellectual property (IP) rights has become central to the strategies of innovating firms worldwide. With global demand for patents rising from 800,000 applications in the early 1980s to 1.8 million in 2009, the Report concludes that growing investments in innovation and the globalization of economic activities are key drivers of this trend.

As a result, IP policy has moved to the forefront of innovation policy. In a foreword to the Report, WIPO Director General Francis Gurry notes that “innovation growth is no longer the prerogative of high-income countries alone; the technological gap between richer and poorer countries is narrowing. Incremental and more local forms of innovation contribute to economic and social development, on a par with world-class technological innovations.”

The Report points to a number of implications of the growing demand for IP rights, namely:

• Knowledge markets based on IP rights are on the rise. Evidence suggests that firms trade and license IP rights more frequently. Internationally, royalty and licensing fee revenue increased from USD 2.8 billion in 1970 to USD 27 billion in 1990, and to approximately USD 180 billion in 2009 – outpacing growth in global GDP. New market intermediaries have emerged, such as IP clearinghouses and brokerages.

Evidence shows that knowledge markets enable firms to specialize, allowing them to be more innovative and efficient at the same time. In addition, they allow firms to control which knowledge to guard and which to share so as to maximize learning – a key element of modern open innovation strategies.

• Patenting has grown especially fast for so-called complex technologies – that is, technologies consisting of many separately patentable inventions where patent ownership is often widespread. This partly reflects technological change. For example, complex technologies include most information and communications technologies that have seen rapid advances over the past decades.

At the same time, some complex technology industries – notably, telecommunications, software, audiovisual technology, optics and, more recently, smartphones and tablet computers – have seen firms strategically build up large patent portfolios. As a result, there is concern that increasingly dense webs of overlapping patent rights slow cumulative innovation processes. Collaborative approaches, such as patent pools, can to some extent address such concerns. However, making sure that crowded patent landscapes do not hold back innovation and entrepreneurship demands careful attention by policymakers.

• In this regard, well-functioning patent institutions have become a cornerstone of successful innovation systems. They perform the essential tasks of ensuring the quality of patents granted and providing balanced dispute resolution. Unprecedented levels of patenting have put these institutions under considerable pressure. Many patent offices have seen growing backlogs of pending applications. In 2010, the number of unprocessed applications worldwide stood at 5.17 million. The choices patent offices make can have far-reaching consequences on incentives to innovate.
• Many countries have put in place policies to harness public research for innovation. One element of such policies is to incentivize patenting by university and public research organizations (PROs) and the subsequent commercial development of their inventions. Accordingly, there has been a marked increase in patent applications by these organizations. University and PRO filings under the WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) have grown from close to zero in the 1980s to more than 15,000 in 2010. High-income economies account for most of this growth – notably France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the US. However, many middle income countries have also seen marked growth. In the case of universities, China leads with 2,348 PCT filings from 1980 to 2010, followed by Brazil, India and South Africa. In the case of PROs, China and India alone represent 78 percent of total fillings from middle-income countries.

Policy reforms aimed at promoting patent-based university technology transfer have multifaceted effects on research institutions, firms, the science system and the economy.

Other conclusions of the Report include:

• While high-income countries still dominate global R&D spending, the geography of innovation has shifted. Global R&D expenditures almost doubled in real terms from 1993 to 2009. Most R&D spending still takes place in high-income countries – around 70 percent of the world total. They spend around 2.5 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on R&D, more than double the rate of middle-income economies. Low- and middle-income economies have increased their share of global R&D expenditure by 13 percentage points between 1993 and 2009. China accounts for most of this increase – more than 10 percentage points – propelling China to the world’s second largest R&D spender in 2009.
• Data on broader investment in intangible assets are only available for selected high income countries. They show that such investment has grown rapidly; in a number of countries, firms now invest more in intangible than in tangible assets. In Europe, investment in intangibles amount to as much as 9.1 percent of GDP in Sweden and the UK.
• There is clear evidence that innovation is increasingly international with a sharp increase in the share of peer-reviewed science and engineering articles with international co-authorship and a rising share of patents which list inventors from more than one country. In addition, multinational firms more and more locate their R&D facilities in a variety of countries – with certain middle-income economies seeing particularly fast growth. The rising share of middle-income countries in the global economy, in turn, is re-orienting innovation towards the demands of those countries.
• Some evidence exists that innovation has become more collaborative and open, but assessing the true scale and importance of new approaches is challenging. For one, it is difficult to draw a clear distinction between open innovation strategies and long-standing collaborative practices, such as joint R&D, joint marketing or strategic partnerships. For another, certain elements of open innovation strategies – such as new policies internal to firms or informal knowledge exchanges – cannot easily be traced.
• Notwithstanding this uncertainty, collaboration in the innovation process can benefit firms and society. Joint IP production occurs through R&D alliances, in particular contractual partnerships and equity-based joint ventures. Data on such alliances are limited and sometimes difficult to interpret, but they suggest that firms in the ICT, biotechnology, and chemical industries most frequently enter into such alliances. Society usually benefits from such collaboration as it enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of the innovation process.

Download

• Full Report
• Introduction
• Table of Contents
• Chapter 1: The changing nature of innovation and intellectual property
• Chapter 2: The economics of intellectual property – old insights and new evidence
• Chapter 3: Balancing collaboration and competition
• Chapter 4: Harnessing public research for innovation – the role of intellectual property
• Acronyms

Intellectual property council talks health, tobacco packaging and enforcement

WTO members assessed the system for helping poorer countries import cheaper medicines, debated whether an Australian bill on plain packaging for cigarettes will hurt poor farmers, and scrutinized a new agreement among a group of countries on stronger intellectual property enforcement, when they met as the TRIPS Council on 24-25 October 2011.

On the “Paragraph 6 system”, which helps countries import cheaper generic medicines, they also agreed that the deadline should be extended for another two years for countries to accept an amendment to the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement, as the number of countries doing so gradually rises. The WTO General Council is expected to approve the decision when it meets in December.

But they delayed a decision on a long-standing, controversial and legally complex question, which could be taken up at the 15–17 December 2011 Ministerial Conference in Geneva. This about the possibility of countries challenging each other in the WTO dispute settlement procedure on intellectual property issues even if the TRIPS agreement has not been violated, and only an expected right has been thwarted: “non-violation” cases in TRIPS.

The possibility of filing non-violation cases in intellectual property was ruled out temporarily in the TRIPS Agreement. This “moratorium” on cases of this kind has so far been extended from one ministerial conference to the next. Switzerland and the US continue to oppose extending the moratorium but they are willing to continue consulting. Most members oppose non-violation cases and want the moratorium extended or the possibility scrapped completely.

The council reviewed China’s implementation of its intellectual property obligations for the last time under Beijing’s 2001 membership agreement, with some praise for the efforts the country has made in protecting intellectual property but also concerns about the amount of counterfeiting and piracy.

The two-day meeting also spent some time on a trio of issues related to biodiversity, biopiracy and patenting life forms (see www.wto.org/tripsbio), with the discussion largely following that of previous meetings.

And it examined various aspects of technical assistance, and developed countries’ incentives for their companies and institutions to transfer technology to least developed countries.

SOME DETAILS

First, a decision:

TRIPS and public health: the Par.6 system and the annual review

Full explanations: www.wto.org/tripshealth
See also: the 2010 review, and follow-up

Background. This was the annual review of how the “Par.6 system” is working. The system removes an intellectual property obstacle that would have prevented countries from using compulsory licences to manufacture generic medicines exclusively for export to countries unable to make them themselves. It refers to paragraph 6 of the 2001 Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health.

The General Council first agreed to remove the obstacle through a 2003 “waiver”, a legal means allowing WTO members not to comply with an obligation or provision in a WTO agreement. Two years later it agreed to an almost identical amendment to the TRIPS Agreement, which is still pending.

Accepting the amendment

More information here

The TRIPS Council agreed to extend the deadline for accepting the 2005 amendment for another two years until 31 December 2013, the third extension. This is needed in order to allow the number of accepting members to reach the two-thirds required for the amendment to take effect.

The extension will be put to the General Council’s December meeting, which is expected to approve it — both the General Council and the TRIPS Council consist of all 153 WTO members.

The number of countries accepting the amendment is rising steadily. Argentina, Indonesia and New Zealand accepted it just before this meeting, and Turkey, Costa Rica and Rwanda said they will do so soon. Rwanda has already benefited from imports under the system.

Ecuador and Cuba said they are not ready to accept the amendment — Ecuador, because it considers the system not to be working; Cuba because it thinks the TRIPS Council still needs to study the situation more. The EU said this position is unfair to potential importing countries.

The WTO Secretariat repeated the clarification that accepting the amendment is completely independent from revising a country’s own laws and regulations to implement the Par.6 system. When enough countries have accepted the amendment, they will be allowing their fellow-members to use it; when they revise their own laws and regulations, they allow themselves to use it.

This clarification has encouraged at least one country — New Zealand — to accept the amendment before its law is modified. A number of others had already made that choice.

The review

The review lasted just over two hours, considerably shorter than the previous year’s review. This was partly because chairperson González urged members not to repeat what they had said in the October 2010 review and March 2011 follow-up. He had supplied them with detailed references to paragraphs in the minutes of these meetings (documents IP/C/M/64 and IP/C/M/65).

It was organized under six headings:

• members’ experience in using or considering using the system (only used once for Canadian exports to Rwanda)
• implementing the system in domestic law and regulations
• accepting the amendment
• capacity building on the Par.6 system and related flexibilities
• alternatives to the system for access to medicines, including procurement and other means
• next steps and recommendations

The comments were broadly on these themes:

Update on Canada’s revised law. Canada said the Private Member’s Bill C-393 for amending Canada’s Access to Medicines Regime (CAMR), which is the law for Canada to export under compulsory licensing (ie, the Par.6 system), died before it could be passed because Parliament was dissolved for the May general election. The government opposed the bill and therefore has no plans to revive it, Canada said. It could not say whether any member of Parliament will propose a new bill.

Is the Par.6 system working? Should there be a workshop? Some developing countries continued to argue that since the system has only been used once, it is too complicated to be effective. Some others questioned whether it is working and said they need more information. They repeated the call for a workshop open to all members with other participants also invited such as non-governmental organizations, and research-based and generic pharmaceutical companies.

Some asked the EU and US about their practices related to a provision of the TRIPS Agreement — Art.31(k) — on actions for dealing with anti-competitive practices, They referred to court cases which they said waived the restrictions on compulsory licences for export, allowing the entire production to be exported and therefore serving as an alternative to the Par.6 system.

Some developed countries continued to argue that the number of times the system has been used is not a good measure of its effectiveness because it is only one among a wide range of policies for making medicines more available and affordable.

Compulsory licensing under the Par.6 system can also be used as a bargaining chip to lower prices. When it is used it is working and when it is not used it could still be working, one delegation said.

These developed countries also remarked that potential importers under the Par.6 system have not described their experience in using or considering using the system. This was among their reasons for arguing that work should continue among members within the TRIPS Council, some adding that delegations could seek information from outside organizations and introduce that into the council’s discussions.

The one country that has imported under the Par.6 system, Rwanda, did speak. It said it fully supports the system and is about to accept the TRIPS amendment.

Australia’s plain packaging bill for tobacco products

The bill, first discussed in the last meeting, has passed the lower house and is now in the Senate, Australia reported. It is part Australia’s anti-smoking campaign. (See also this Australian government web page, which includes images of samples of the proposed packaging.)

Ukraine (represented by Economy Vice Minister Valery Pjatnitsky), and a number of developing countries (Dominican Rep, Mexico, Nigeria, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Zimbabwe) repeated their concern that the law will violate Australia’s obligations under the TRIPS Agreement by preventing cigarette and cigar companies from using their trademarks, ultimately hurting their poor farmers. Some argued that the plain packaging will make counterfeiting easier, and some said it will cut costs and lower prices, stimulating demand rather than inhibiting it.

Chile, China, Switzerland, India and the EU asserted countries’ right to use flexibilities in the TRIPS Agreement for public health purposes, including tobacco control, sought more information and some of them urged Australia to ensure that its measures do not conflict with the agreement. Brazil stressed all countries’ right to adopt measures to protect public health, which it consider an important general principle for the relationship between intellectual property protection and health.

Uruguay, New Zealand and Norway supported Australia, which described how serious a problem smoking is and assured members that the policy has been studied carefully to ensure it does not violate TRIPS provisions and that it will be effective in reducing smoking. The World Health Organization described the serious global picture and said plain packaging is part of its Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

The issue has also been raised in the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Committee.

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)

The ACTA text is in document IP/C/W/563.

Many participants in the ACTA negotiations (Australia, Canada, the EU, Rep. Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the US) informed the membership about the agreement, which eight of them signed on 1 October 2011 and the EU, Mexico and Switzerland are expected to sign soon.

They described ACTA as a means of strengthening the enforcement of intellectual property rights without altering the obligations of the TRIPS Agreement. The Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health, which makes health a priority, is upheld (in the preamble), they said, and generic medicines in transit or traded across borders will not be affected because the agreement excludes patents from actions at the border (footnote 6 of Article 13).

India, Angola, Ecuador, Brazil, China, Chile, Venezuela and Zimbabwe repeated a number of concerns raised in previous meetings (June and October 2010, including whether access to medicines would be impeded, or pressure would increase on countries to protect intellectual property to a higher standard than required in the WTO (the ACTA countries said they would not), and the implications for the WTO system of discussing an agreement negotiated outside the WTO.

The question of discussing intellectual property enforcement routinely in the TRIPS Council has been controversial from time to time. Some developed countries wanted to discuss it because they considered counterfeiting and piracy to be a serious problem; developing countries resisted, fearing that this would target them and be used to argue for new standards more stringent than those in TRIPS. The ACTA countries said this background of opposition to work on enforcement in the WTO was one reason why they negotiated the agreement outside the WTO. Then some developing countries raised the ACTA negotiations in some meetings, one of the complaints being a lack of information.

In this meeting India said it appreciated the information and the briefings that had been given by the ACTA countries, although it still has concerns.

China’s final transitional review

See also: www.wto.org/china and all documents on China’s TRIPS transitional review.

This was the TRIPS Council’s final transitional review of how China is implementing its intellectual property rights obligations under the TRIPS Agreement and its 2001 membership deal. The reviews are a unique requirement in China’s the membership agreement for a range of WTO subjects including intellectual property, annually for the first eight years and once more after 10 years.

Japan (document IP/C/W/556), the US, EU, Rep. Korea and Canada praised China for the efforts it has put into protecting intellectual property rights, the information it has supplied to the committee, in some cases the bilateral cooperation that has taken place and the campaigns on protection.

But they and their companies remain seriously concerned about counterfeiting and piracy, particularly digital, hi-tech and brandname products. They commented on a range of issues, such as the threshold set to determine whether a case is serious enough to justify prosecution and other aspects of the enforcement process. Some were also concerned about legislation involving compulsory technology transfer.

Mexico’s particular concern was about the protection of tequila and mescal as geographical indications, partly linked to a sanitary and phytosanitary regulation setting a maximum alcohol content which Mexico said is too low for some types of the spirits. It also complained about a Chinese beer (“Cerono”) mimicking Mexico’s Corona brand.

India wanted China to explain a law prevent patenting on “scientific discoveries”. Nigeria said it is concerned about exports of substandard and counterfeit products.

China circulated a document (IP/C/W/564) before the meeting, outlining latest developments in revising its copyright, trademark and patent laws, enforcement, and other intellectual property issues. In the meeting it explained these at length in reply to members’ questions.

It concluded by thanking members for cooperation over the 10 years of the review and pledged to continue to work with them bilaterally and in the WTO. China said its government had shown the political will to implement and enforce intellectual property protection and highlighted the Chinese population’s increasing awareness about the issue.

Chairperson: Ambassador Federico A González (Paraguay)

Next meetings

TRIPS Council (regular) meetings (could change):

2012
Tuesday-Wednesday 28–29 February
Tuesday-Wednesday 5–6 June
Tuesday-Wednesday 6–7 November