The Association of American Publishers are apparently worried about Larry Lessig.

At KEI Washington, DC offices

Patents and Standards at WIPO and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF)

AGENDA

PARTICIPANTS

DOCUMENTS

The penultimate day of the WIPO development committee held in-depth discussions on recommendation 20 of the Development Agenda which states:

To promote norm-setting activities related to IP that support a robust public domain in WIPO’s Member States, including the possibility of preparing guidelines which could assist interested Member States in identifying subject matters that have fallen into the public domain within their respective jurisdictions.

These are a few quick points about the PhRMA submission.

1. PhRMA asks that ACTA “Establish liability for Internet Service Providers and Other Operators that Facilitate Trade in Counterfeit Medical Products.”

This is potentially quite an important and controversial recommendation. PhRMA wants to make telecommunications companies liable if one of their customers sells counterfeit products.

On Wednesday (9 July 11, 2008) the WIPO Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP) steered away from the detailed financial and human resources discussions that characterized the first two days of discussion to more substantive discussions on competition policy.

The morning session considered recommendation 7 of the WIPO Development Agenda which calls upon WIPO to

The second session of the the WIPO Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP) is meeting this week in Geneva (July 7-11, 2008). The first meeting of this development committee (March 2008) examined Cluster A (Technical Assistance and Capacity Building) of the 45 approved Development Agenda recommendations.

After a hiatus of three years, the WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (SCP) met for its 12th session on June 23, 2008 to June 27, 2008. Given the collapse of the talks to initiate a Substantive Patent Law Treaty (SPLT) to harmonize patent law with respect to prior art, novelty, inventive step and grace period, even the most prescient of WIPO watchers were at a loss in prognosticating the outcome of the WIPO SCP.

At 10:52 AM today, the United States of America (on behalf of Group B, the “rich country” group of WIPO) nominated Maximiliano Santa Cruz of Chile to be chair of the WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (SCP). Singapore, on behalf of the Asian Group, seconded the nomination of Mr Santa Cruz and proposed candidates from China and Romania as Vice-Chairs. Brazil registered its support for this complement of candidates.

We have received a copy of an amendment to the September 2006 voluntary License Agreement between Gilead Sciences, Inc and Ranbaxy Laboratories, Ltd concerning the manufacture and sale of Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate (TDF) and Emtricitabine for the treatment of HIV-AIDS.

On 24 May 2008, the 61st World Health Assembly, the World Health Organization’s highest governing body, adopted the Global Strategy on Public, Innovation and Intellectual Property. As stated by James Love (Director, Knowledge Ecology International) in his random-bits posting (31 May 2008)

The WHO IGWG drafting group meeting in Salle XXIII of the Palais des Nations during this week’s World Health Assembly is charged with hammering out a consensus global strategy that would inter alia, secure

an enhanced and sustainable basis for needs-driven, essential health research and development relevant to diseases that disproportinately affect developing countries, proposing clear objectives and priorities for research and development, and estimating funding needs in in this area.

On Tuesday, 20 May 2008, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia and Tunisia introduced a draft resolution (A61/A/Conf. Paper No 1) on counterfeiting.

While counterfeiting medicines is an important public health problem, and as traditionally defined, is a criminal enterprise that should be subject to tough legal sanctions, the resolution is problematic.

During the IGWG, BIO, the trade association, a group not yet in official relations with the WHO, was given the right to place four persons inside the closed drafting sessions. One of them was Jon Santamauro, who until recently was a US trade official on intellectual property issues.

“Mr. Santamauro has more than 15 years of experience handling intellectual property issues for the U.S. Government.”

On April 15, 2008, WIPO released its long awaited Report on the International Patent System.