Over the past several weeks there have been a several cases where some well motivated and knowledgeable persons about copyright policy have expressed criticism of an effort by WIPO to negotiate a treaty for persons who are blind or have other reading disabilities, on the grounds that this is not ambitious enough, and a larger all inclusive treaty on limitations and exceptions should be the target.
On 21 January 2009, WHO released a document (EB124/16 Add.2) relating to the global strategy and plan of action of the public health, innovation and intellectual strand of its work entitled “Proposed time frames and estimated funding needs“. This document is a costing exercise to “estimate funding needs for the implementation of the plan”. Continue Reading
Roundtable on De-linking R&D Incentives from Prices: Designing Innovation Inducement Prizes for Diagnostics, New Drugs and Vaccines for Type II and III diseases and conditions, with a particular focus on TB and Chagas Disease
The meeting is going to be small with around 40 high level policy makers and technical participants, including industry, donors, civil society and government officials.
TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue, Washington, DC.
The TACD conference on Patents, Copyrights and Knowledge Governance: the next fours years is going to be held on January 12-13th, 2009 in Washington, DC.
Venue: Carnegie Institution of Washington • 1530 P Street NW • Washington, DC 20005
The event is free and is now open for registrations on the TACD website: http://www.tacd.org/events/patents_2009.htm
This was the title the Washington Post today gave the AP story.
This was the title of the FTC Press release:
This is from an exchange on IP-Health.
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Dear Aidan and Thomas.
There are several things I could mention about this revised position on compulsory licenses, but I will begin with these.
This is a comment on the references to compulsory licensing in the Hollis/Pogge HIF book that are quoted below.
https://www.keionline.org/blogs/2008/11/18/excerpts-from-hif-compulsory-licensing/
Aidan Hollis and Thomas Pogge, The Health Impact Fund, Making New Medicines Accessible for All, A Report of Incentives for Global Health, 2008.
In an exchange on the i+a listserve, I asked Professor Pogge if the decision to reject open licensing was in part because he was concerned about opposition from certain elements of the pharmaceutical industry. This was his response, shared here with permission:
WHO has announced the names for the Expert Working Group on R&D financing
We don’t know everyone on the list, but for the people that we do know, we are generally impressed. The WHO seems to have created a body with considerable expertise and reputation, and included people who will consider new ideas. This seems like a very good start.
At KEI Washington, DC offices
Aaron Kesselheim , Brigham and Women's Hospital/Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard University
David Ridley , The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University
James Love, KEI Continue Reading