Expert Panel Recommends That The WHO Move Forward On Transparency And Delinkage 28/11/2017 by Guest contributor for Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment On Monday, 27 November, the WHO published the recommendations of the overall programme review of the global strategy and plan of action on public, health innovation and intellectual property (EB142/14). The expert panel provided 33 recommendations which included 17 forward looking”high-priority actions” including on transparency and delinkage, writes Thiru Balasubramaniam.
JPO Issues First Decision To Register Sound Trademark Consisting Solely Of Sound Element 16/10/2017 by Guest contributor for Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment On 26 September, the Japan Patent Office (JPO) announced, for the first time ever, the grant of protection to three sound trademarks consisting solely of a sound element, writes Masaki Mikami.
Case Shows European Luxury Brands Must Be Popular In Japan To Be Protected There 29/09/2017 by Guest contributor for Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment In a recent decision, the Opposition Board of the Japan Patent Office dismissed an opposition filed by CFUB Sisley, a French producer of cosmetics and fragrances founded in 1976, against the word mark “SISLOY” written in a standard character. The case shows that the status of European luxury brand will not automatically enjoy broader scope of protection in Japan unless the brand obtains a high degree of popularity and reputation among Japanese consumers, writes Masaki Mikami.
In-N-Out vs. Smashburger: A Juicy US Burger Lawsuit Invokes Multiple Trademark Law Doctrines 04/09/2017 by Guest contributor for Intellectual Property Watch 1 Comment In a US burger battle, it appears that Smashburger may soon end up with a bad taste in its mouth if In-N-Out’s allegations in its latest trademark complaint against Smashburger are proven true.
Case Study – Building Effective IP Coverage Efficiently Within An International Engineering Conglomerate 29/08/2017 by Guest contributor for Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment This article describes how to build up an effective IP coverage for an international industrial conglomerate by defining the basic IP shield construction for all group companies, setting up IP generation programs and developing an IP focus while doing this efficiently by engaging the management into the IP decisions and managing the mix of internal and external IP service resources.
US, European Views On IP Management And Digital Business 25/07/2017 by Guest contributor for Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment Data-driven technologies are enabling the expansion of trade and data flows around the world. We have disruptive smart products, smart industrial processes, smart clouds and smart services. Traditional industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemical and mechanical engineering digitally transform production processes to generate custom-tailored services and improve competitiveness using artificial intelligence while new companies emerge with disruptive offers. Such artificial intelligence-based business models, however, are bringing about a rethinking in European regulations in relation to copyrights, such as that deployed by DeepMind and Pinterest, for instance, because machine learning may reproduce countless amounts of proprietary content to generate raw solutions. A recent event in Paris delved into these and other issues, including data ownership and access rights, as well as inventions by computers.
A Brief Analysis Of Nepal’s First National IP Policy 09/06/2017 by Guest contributor for Intellectual Property Watch 2 Comments Earlier this year, the Nepal Government released its long-awaited first national intellectual property policy, after becoming the first least developed country (LDC) to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) on 23 April 2004.
Global Health R&D: Evidence, Priorities, Coordination 29/05/2017 by Mara Pillinger for Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment World Health Assembly Agenda Item 13.5 is descriptively-yet-uninformatively labelled “Follow-up of the report of the Consultative Expert Working Group on Research and Development: Financing and Coordination (CEWG).” But that anodyne title actually masks an important milestone in the World Health Organization’s long-running efforts to increase R&D around neglected diseases and diseases of poverty.
Will The Money Keep Rolling?: Innovative Global Health Financing And Governance 26/05/2017 by Mara Pillinger for Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment We are in a liminal moment for global health financing. The “golden age” of increasing donor funding is clearly over, arrested by the 2008 financial crisis. But while donor contributions are no longer climbing, they have not been falling, either. And it is possible this status quo will hold… But it’s equally possible that this is just the pause before the roller-coaster drops. Considering that Gavi, the Global Fund, and the World Bank will all be launching another replenishment round in 2019—and given the uncertainty surrounding US foreign aid commitments and post-polio financing—that drop may prove very steep indeed.
Expanding Access To Medicines: What Role For Transparency? 25/05/2017 by Mara Pillinger for Intellectual Property Watch 1 Comment Transparency” and “accountability” are familiar buzzwords. Like salt and pepper, they pop up on nearly every list of ingredients for sound policy and good governance. But, as Ilona Kickbusch and Suerie Moon of the Graduate Institute Global Health Centre in Geneva point out, their details are rarely specified: transparency for what? Accountability to whom? On Tuesday afternoon, those not busy casting a vote for the next World Health Organization director general got the chance to dig into these questions at a panel co-sponsored by the Graduate Institute and FIND. In particular, discussion focused on transparency in terms of public access to two types of information: drug R&D costs and clinical trial data.