A group of public health experts gathered by the World Health Organization agreed today to continue a temporary moratorium on research done on the H5N1 bird flu virus modified in a laboratory to be more transmissible between mammals. But they said research should continue on the naturally occurring version of the virus.

The closed door meeting took place at WHO on 16-17 February.

Concern arose recently when it became known that research groups in the Netherlands and the United States have “created versions of the H5N1 influenza virus which are more transmissible in mammals than the H5N1 virus that occurs naturally,” as WHO put it, leading the health agency to convene the group.

The group consisted of various interested parties – including the researchers, the funders of the research, publications that want to profit from publishing the research, the countries that provided the viruses, bioethicists, and directors from several WHO “collaborating-center laboratories specializing in influenza,” WHO said. Publication of the manuscripts of the research will be delayed.

More meetings will be held in the future. It is expected that they will agree to publish the research later this year, according to sources.

Microsoft Corporation has issued a statement that it will not seek injunctions on its “standard essential patents” in keeping with its promises to international standards organisations. It further said it will make those essential patents available for licence without condition.

The statement is here.

“Industry standards are vitally important to the development of the Internet and to interoperability among mobile devices and other computers,” Microsoft said. “The international standards system works well because firms that contribute to standards promise to make their essential patents available to others on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms. Consumers and the entire industry will suffer if, in disregard of this promise, firms seek to block others from shipping products on the basis of such standard essential patents.”

Therefore, Microsoft will: make its standard essential patents available on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms; not seek an injunction or exclusion order against any firm on the basis of those essential patents; make essential patents available for licence to other firms without requiring that those firms license their patents back to Microsoft, except for any patents they have that are essential to the same industry standard; and only transfer such patents to other firms if they agree to those terms.

Microsoft has been scrutinised in the past for potentially influencing international standards bodies (IPW, Access to Knowledge, 29 February 2008).

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has embarked on a programme of allowing new generic top-level domains on the internet (like .com), an initiative that has worried trademark holders and international organisations. Now the World Intellectual Property Organization Arbitration and Mediation Center is offering services for trademark holders who wish to challenge proposals for new gTLDs later this year.

WIPO “has been appointed by ICANN as the exclusive provider of dispute resolution services for trademark based ‘pre-delegation’ Legal Rights Objections under ICANN’s New gTLD Program,” it says in its webpage on the services.

This mechanism forms part of the Trademark Rights Protection Mechanisms for New gTLDs, accompanying the ICANN initiative.

Applications for new gTLDs are due at ICANN by 12 April, and will be made public soon after by ICANN, which will announce the objection filing period, expected to about seven months, according to WIPO.

A new paper from the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) offers ideas on addressing misappropriation of genetic resources and traditional knowledge at the World Intellectual Property Organization.

The WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC) meets this week, from 14-22 February.

The paper, “Bridging the Gap on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources in WIPO’s Intergovernmental Committee (IGC),” by David Vivas-Eugui (Issue Paper No. 34) is available here.

The paper looks at the different fora in which these issues have been addressed in recent years, with an acceleration in the past two years in the IGC.

“Against this background,” ICTSD said in a release, “this issue paper examines at length the range of measures and options discussed in the IGC especially biodiversity disclosure requirements and databases. It also considers the binding or non-binding nature of the instrument(s) that might emerge from the IGC and their different implications. In connection to all these aspects, the paper makes recommendations regarding processes, substance and existing research gaps that could contribute towards advancing the IGC’s deliberations.”

A new publication by a well-known open access advocate proposes a business model for sharing content online that would recognise sharing as a right.

The publication, “Sharing: Culture and the Economy in the Internet Age,” is by Philippe Aigrain, co-founder of the French civil liberties group La Quadrature du Net, in collaboration with Suzanne Aigrain.

The financial model adds the “creative contribution” into the financial equation so as to expand the creative economy “in a context where sharing is recognized as a right,” according to a release.

“To break away from the repressive war on the sharing of culture online, exemplified by the SOPA/PIPA bills in the US or the ACTA agreement on a global scale, Sharing makes a case for the legitimacy and usefulness of non-market sharing between individuals of digital works,” it said.

“The creative contribution (a term that Aigrain has been using since 2008) is a flatrate mechanism with original features based on social rights, rewards and remuneration for artists as well as financing of future works, data collection for rewards based on voluntary provision using automated recording on user machines and under their sole control, and more,” it said.

The book has been published in a hybrid form, with four components:

* The paper book, available globally,
* a commercial eBook in Epub format,
* an open access electronic version,
all under a CC-By-NC-ND license,
* and a dedicated “live book“ website at http://www.sharing-thebook.net where you can comment on the book chapters, download source code and datasets, and interactively run models with parameters of your choice.

The book is available here, or from Amsterdam University Press here, or University of Chicago Press (US) here.

Some 70 groups from across the social and political spectrum have sent a letter to the US Senate and House of Representatives calling for them to step back from any anti-piracy legislation until more consideration can be given of the effect on the internet.

“Now is the time for Congress to take a breath, step back, and approach the issues from a fresh perspective,” they said.

Groups representing digital rights, technology companies, media, libraries, human rights, women’s rights, transparency initiatives, and others signed the letter, which is available here.

Advocacy group Public Knowledge said in a blog post, here, that the recent effort that led to Congress withdrawing the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) (IPW, Access to Knowledge, 20 January 2012) was not the work of industry but of internet users.

The World Intellectual Property Organization has launched a survey of stakeholder perceptions and expectations of the UN agency.

Geneva-based WIPO provides a range of services in overseeing numerous intellectual property-related instruments and is the central location for global discussions of IP policy and law. As a UN body, it is driven by its nearly 200 member states. But it has many other stakeholders who use its services or are affected by its activities.

WIPO “seeks to deliver high quality services and fully engage with all its stakeholders,” it said in a release today. “In an effort to better understand our stakeholders’ expectations and perceptions, and to evaluate and improve our external communications, we are carrying out a perceptions survey.”

The survey is being conducted by an outside research firm.

Access the survey here.

A leading supplier of generic antiretroviral medicines has signed an agreement to manufacture new HIV medicines for sale in developing countries, the Medicines Patent Pool announced today.

The Indian company Emcure Pharmaceuticals “will be able to manufacture several products licensed to the Pool by Gilead Sciences, including: emtricitabine (FTC), cobicistat (COBI), elvitegravir (EVG), and the fixed-dose combination of these medicines known as the Quad (a combination of FTC, COBI, EVG and tenofovir),” the Patent Pool said.

“Generic manufacturers play a central role in providing low cost HIV medicines and have helped increase the number of people receiving treatment in the developing world, so the rapid uptake of our licences by generic companies is a positive sign,” Patent Pool Executive Director Ellen ‘t Hoen said in a statement.

Emcure, a top-15 Indian pharmaceutical company, is the third generic manufacturer to take licences from the Pool. Emcure sells in more than 76 countries around the world.

More information about the Medicines Patent Pool is available here.

The European Commission has issued a formal request to Italy to remove linkage between patents and generic medicines authorisation that it says is causing delays in generics reaching the market.

The Commission issued the request for full compliance within two months with EU Directive 2001/83/EC, on the Community code for medicinal products for human use, which it said states that “the processing of marketing authorisation procedures can be carried out without being affected by the protection of industrial and commercial property interests.”

The Commission pointed out that the rules also state that “the authorisation holder of a generic drug is not allowed to place a product on the market before the patent on the reference product has expired.”

Italy has missed the timeline for changing its national law, which is resulting in long delays in the introduction of generics onto the market, at the expense of consumers.

“In particular,” in said, “in Italy, a law prevents manufacturers of generic products to submit their request for marketing authorisation prior to the penultimate year of the lifetime of a patent on a reference product. For example, if a patent on a reference product has a 10 year lifetime; manufacturers will need to wait at least 9 years before they are allowed to submit their request for marketing authorisation. As a result of this law, and of the lengthy procedure to secure the authorisation for marketing, manufacturers of generic products are placed at a disadvantage on the market.”

If Italy does not comply within two months the case could be referred to the European Court of Justice.

The European Generics Association and the Italian association for generic medicines (ASSOGENERICI) welcomed the announcement, saying that “as stated by the European Commission in the pharmaceutical sector inquiry report, linking the marketing authorisation process of generic medicines to intellectual property rights of the originator product (so called: “patent linkage”) is a clear abuse of the EU regulatory system.”

The generics groups said the action by the Italian government will result in increased competition in the market.

Commission announcement and infringement procedure are here.

EGA press release is here.

A much-referenced book now out in paperback remains one of the few books with a broad social sciences perspective on current conflicts over intellectual property policy, with a focus on the national level set within the context of shifting global patterns.

The book, “Politics of Intellectual Property: Contestation over the Ownership, Use, and Control of Knowledge and Information” was edited by Sebastian Haunss and Kenneth C. Shadlen.

It contains analyses from developed and developing countries written by a range of experts who look at business, farmers, social movements, legal communities, state officials, transnational enterprises and international organisations. Discussions cover key policy areas such as public health, digital rights, indigenous knowledge, and genetic resources.

The book is available from publisher Edward Elgar here.

The World Economic Forum annual gathering of private sector leaders today released a “Cyber Resilience Initiative to Safeguard the Digital Environment” that includes a commitment to protect intellectual property rights online.

The initiative, including a set of shared principles to be signed by CEOs, centres around the view that the interdependence of internet users means all must agree to minimise risks. It includes mention of thwarting cybercriminals and hackers.

In the “commitment to cyber resilience,” to be signed by CEOs, it states:

“2.2 The executive management team recognizes its leadership
role in setting the tone and structure for cyber resilience

In line with its fiduciary and other leadership duties, the executive
leadership recognizes the important nature of mitigating cyber-related
risks as an essential element of the on-going viability and success of
their institution, safeguarding its intellectual property and protecting
the information it holds in order to deliver products or services to its
customer or constituent base, consistent with the applicable sector
and jurisdiction law.”

The initiative is here.

The press release and supporting information is here.

By Rachel Marusak Hermann for Intellectual Property Watch

The Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Michel Kazatchkine, has announced that he would step down by 16 March in a letter published on the Fund’s website.

The resignation letter is here.

Kazatchkine said that he could not continue as director after a decision made by the Board in November to appoint a General Manager to oversee the Consolidated Transformational Plan and report directly to the Board. “While I remain fully committed to the Global Fund and its mission, I have concluded that I should not continue as Executive Director in these circumstances.”

The Global Fund also announced on 24 January that Gabriel Jaramillo has been appointed to the General Manager role. Born in Colombia, the Brazilian national is a former chairman and CEO of Sovereign Bank and was a member of the high-level, independent Panel that reviewed the Global Fund’s fiduciary controls and oversight mechanism. His 12-month term begins 1 February. The appointment press release is here.

The announcement comes at the time of a scandal relating to the Fund brewing in the French press involving an investment by the Fund in that country, but the Fund’s Board president has stated that it is not connected to Kazatchkine. A French article on the subject is here.

Meanwhile, the world’s largest backer of national programmes to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria announced last December that it would not undertake any new grants or funding until 2014.

The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) yesterday released a business guide to key intellectual property policy issues worldwide.

The Paris-based business group announced its 11th edition of the ICC Intellectual Property Roadmap: Current and Emerging Issues for Business and Policymakers, at the Licensing Executives Society International’s (LESI) Global Technology Impact Forum.

According to ICC: “Most sections of the 11th edition Roadmap have been extensively updated to highlight IP developments arising from technological, economic, political and social changes. These include the decision to open up the generic Top Level Domain name space, measures to control copyright and trademark infringement on the Internet, and efforts to address the high costs and lengthy proceedings necessary to obtain patents in multiple jurisdictions (such as more intensive cooperation between patent offices, further steps in the EU initiative to create a unitary patent and patent litigation system, and reform bringing the US patent system one step closer to other patent systems worldwide).”

It also includes developments related to the life sciences, such as the conclusion of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing in relation to genetic resources, and the protection of biosimilar drugs in the EU and the US, it said.

The roadmap is published every two years, it is translated into several languages including Arabic, Chinese, German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian.

The ICC IP Roadmap 2012 is available here.

In the annual State of Union address last night, US President Obama announced a new Trade Enforcement Unit that includes anti-piracy and anti-counterfeiting.

Obama said the nation is on track to double exports since he took office three years ago, in part due to his administration’s aggressive work on trade agreements. But he said trading partners – naming China – will not be allowed to circumvent trade rules any longer.

An excerpt from his speech is here:

“We’re also making it easier for American businesses to sell products all over the world. Two years ago, I set a goal of doubling U.S. exports over five years. With the bipartisan trade agreements we signed into law, we’re on track to meet that goal ahead of schedule. (Applause.) And soon, there will be millions of new customers for American goods in Panama, Colombia, and South Korea. Soon, there will be new cars on the streets of Seoul imported from Detroit, and Toledo, and Chicago. (Applause.)

I will go anywhere in the world to open new markets for American products. And I will not stand by when our competitors don’t play by the rules. We’ve brought trade cases against China at nearly twice the rate as the last administration — and it’s made a difference. (Applause.) Over a thousand Americans are working today because we stopped a surge in Chinese tires. But we need to do more. It’s not right when another country lets our movies, music, and software be pirated. It’s not fair when foreign manufacturers have a leg up on ours only because they’re heavily subsidized.

Tonight, I’m announcing the creation of a Trade Enforcement Unit that will be charged with investigating unfair trading practices in countries like China. (Applause.) There will be more inspections to prevent counterfeit or unsafe goods from crossing our borders. And this Congress should make sure that no foreign company has an advantage over American manufacturing when it comes to accessing financing or new markets like Russia. Our workers are the most productive on Earth, and if the playing field is level, I promise you — America will always win. (Applause.)

I also hear from many business leaders who want to hire in the United States but can’t find workers with the right skills. Growing industries in science and technology have twice as many openings as we have workers who can do the job. Think about that — openings at a time when millions of Americans are looking for work. It’s inexcusable. And we know how to fix it.”

Full text of the speech is available here.

The European Patent Office Economic and Scientific Advisory Board today announced its priorities for research, including patents fees, thickets and quality.

“The role and structure of fees, the importance of patent quality and challenges to the functioning of the patent system from overlapping sets of patent rights, so-called patent thickets: these are the issues to be addressed,” EPO said in a release, following the inaugural meeting of the board.

Professor Dietmar Harhoff of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich was appointed chairman of the group, which is made up of globally oriented experts with an emphasis on Europe. The mission of the board is “to advise the EPO on the economic, practical and societal impact of the patent system,” EPO said, noting that the board is “independent in its choice of topics and approaches.” The group is supported by EPO Chief Economist Nikolaus Thumm.

“The analysis of topics chosen by the Board today will improve our understanding of how these issues impact on innovation,” EPO President Benoît Battistelli said in the release. “Innovation is crucial to addressing challenges such as climate change, health and food security.”

Board members will hold a series of workshops with stakeholders and users of the patent system, as well as with other expert organisations, and will commission new research where appropriate.

The blog Monday Note has an analysis today on digital piracy that suggests that anti-piracy measures like France’s Hadopi are not working, while there is evidence that offering competitive legitimate download sites does work.

“There are three ways to fight piracy: endless legal actions, legally blocking access, or creating alternative legit offers,” Frédéric Filloux wrote in his blog post.

“The sue-them-until-they-die approach is mostly a US-centric one,” he said. “It will never yield great results (aside from huge legal fees) due to the decentralized nature of the internet (there is no central servers for BitTorrent) and to the tolerance in countries in harboring cyberlockers.”

“As for law-based enforcement systems such has the French HADOPI or American SOPA/PIPA, they don’t work either,” he said. “HADOPI proved to be porous as chalk, and the US lawmakers had to yield to the public outcry. Both bills were poorly designed and inefficient.”

The latter refers to the US Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), both of which were derailed last week by large online protests (IPW, US Policy, 20 January 2012).

HADOPI is the French government system which threatens internet users found repeatedly downloading unauthorised content with expulsion from the entire internet.

The music industry announced today that it believes HADOPI is working (IPW, Enforcement, 23 January 2012).

French online rights group La Quadrature du Net this week announced an analysis asserting that in more than half of European Union countries, telecommunications operators engage in “illegitimate” restrictions of their users’ access.

The report from RespectMyNet “includes 144 confirmed reports of breaches to Net neutrality, spread among 44 operators in more than 14 Member States who engage in violating their users’ freedom of communication by blocking or throttling specific content, applications or services available on the Internet,” La Quadrature du Net said.

“Such evidence shows that EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes’ “laisser-faire” approach on Net neutrality amounts to allowing operators to blatantly violate their users’ freedom of communication,” the group said. “Now is the time for the EU Commission to start working on stringent measures to enforce Net neutrality all across Europe.”

The announcement is here.

A recent book analyses the role of intellectual property protection in providing incentives for innovation and its impact on access to medicines by retracing the origins, content and interpretations of the World Trade Organization agreement on IP rights and trade. It concludes that the debate needs to be recast in order for all sides to benefit going forward.

“Interpreting TRIPS: Globalisation of Intellectual Property Rights and Access to Medicines,” was written by Hiroko Yamane, professor of international economic law, competition and intellectual property at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. She was a former negotiator on IP, innovation and public health in Geneva.

The book gives an issue-by-issue analysis of provisions of the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and latest debates, ranging from biotechnology and patentable subject matter, to the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health, to TRIPs-plus provisions in US free trade agreements, to the use of flexibilities within the agreement. But it also examines ways to interpret TRIPS, and TRIPS and innovation, as well as policies of emerging economies and industry.

According to the publishers: “The book examines various views of the role of IPRs as incentives for innovation against the backdrop of development and the transfer of technology between globalised, knowledge-based, high technology economies. The author concludes … [that] IPR protection should be supporting domestic policies for innovation and investment. This, in turn requires a re-casting of the debate about TRIPS, to place cooperation in global and efficient R&D at the heart of concerns over IPR protection.”

The book is available from Hart Publishing, here.

The online protest yesterday against two bills in the United States Congress aimed at stopping internet piracy was the biggest ever, according to preliminary statistics being circulated by the protestors. More than 115,000 websites – including four of the top 10 in the US – and over 13 million internet users participated. There were 10 million petition signatures, 3 million emails sent, 100,000 phone calls, and some 3 million messages on Twitter.

At issue are the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate (IPW, US Policy, 18 January 2012, IPW, US Policy, 17 January 2012). The Senate is scheduled to have a vote on the PIPA on 24 January.

The number of senators opposed to PIPA rose from five at the start of the new year to at least 36, including five (or six, according to OpenCongress.org) who were formerly cosponsors, according to Fight for the Future, which is posting numbers to its website sopastrike.com. Some senators have indicated they still want a bill but want more time to consider it.

“Many offices’ phone lines were taken offline due to the call traffic and many senator webpages’ simply stopped working due to the barrage of visits and emails being sent to them,” Fight for the Future said. And, “Members of Congress are dropping their support for the bills in droves.” Many are using social media to announce their decisions. There were even thousands of protestors in person in some cities, and dozens of in-person meetings before 18 January.

Meanwhile, on 24 January, as five senators led by Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden plan to filibuster the vote on cloture (that would otherwise cut off debate on the bill), groups will be planning a live-audience engagement with the filibuster, they said. “Audience members can submit comments, stories, and testimonials of internet-based moments in history that will be read by the senators during the filibuster,” said Public Knowledge. “A live stream will be set up for the public to get involved and to watch the proceedings.”

A list of answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) about the much-disputed anti-piracy legislation before the United States Congress has been published by CNET News. It also reported that some 4.5 million people signed the petition on Google during the blackout protest yesterday.

The debate is over a proposed bill in the House of Representatives called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and its Senate counterpart the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Yesterday thousands of websites went “dark” in protest against what opponents say are overly restrictive provisions in the bill (IPW, US Policy, 18 January 2012). This led to as many as 10 or more elected officials pulling back their support for the bill, according to reports.

The article on FAQs is here.