KEI comments on the ITPC Letter to the Medicines Patent Pool Foundation and UNITAID

The following excerpts are from an exchange of messages on ip-health about a recent recent petition regarding the patent pool that has been posted to several public health email lists. Among the leaders in the petition are apparently ITPC and the New York based I-MAK. ITPC has a long history of advocating for the interests of persons living with HIV, and I-MAK has for many years sought to overcome patent barriers for access to medicines. A copy of the petition is here http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/mppunitaid.

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UNITAID 3rd Consultative Forum; Nineteen IP recommendations

On 4-5 October 2011, UNITAID held its third Consultative Forum giving stakeholders the opportunity to view UNITAID’s achievements to date as well as provide input on UNITAID’s activities moving forward. Attendees at the forum included civil society, NGOs, implementing partners, representatives from the pharmaceutical industry and private foundations, and governmental officials. Several of the presentations from the IP workshop as well as the recommendations from the IP workshop are attached below.

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KEI comment on US signing of ACTA

Today USTR was pointing to four documents to explain the U.S. decision to sign the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. While it was not surprising that the United States signed the agreement, KEI was disappointed that the statements did not address the issue of the inconsistencies between US law and the ACTA, or make any commitments that the ACTA Committee would operate in an open, transparent and inclusive manner.

These are the USTR documents:

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David Hammerstein tweets on the European Parliament hearing on the WIPO Treaty for Blind negotiations

These were copied from David Hammerstein’s twitter feed, October 3, 2010.

http://twitter.com/#!/dahammerstein

  • Treaty Visually Impaired before European Parliament at aprox. 15:30. Webstream: bit.ly/kQgrDf info: bit.ly/oDLbL0
  • This is the correct link for the webstreaming of Treaty of visually impaired before the European Parliament: bit.ly/PwS9T
  • Session begins in EP´s Petition Committee on Treaty for Visually Impaired. Chris Friend, World Blind Union condemns us to “book famine”
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ACTA is not consistent with US laws on injunctions and damages

Two areas where ACTA is inconsistent with US law, injunctions and damages
KEI Policy Brief, 2011:2
30 September 2011, revised 3 October 2011
James Love and Krista Cox


As the U.S. is reportedly about to sign ACTA, we wanted to point out two important areas where ACTA is not consistent with U.S. law. These are the sections of ACTA dealing with injunctions and damages. Below we have included the text from ACTA and the WTO TRIPS agreement on these two topics.

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Ecuador’s proposal to WIPO General Assembly to convene a Diplomatic Conference on a Treaty for Persons with Reading Disabilities

On Thursday, 29 September 2011, Ecuador made the following intervention at the WIPO General Assembly (GA) during the consideration of a Report on the Work of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) which called for the WIPO GA to convene a diplomatic conference in 2012 on a treaty on copyright exceptions for persons with reading disabilities provided that SCCR23 reached agreement on a negotiating text for the TVI.

Gracias señor Presidente.

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