The Federal Circuit heard oral argument yesterday on a case addressing a three-step method of hedging commodities consumption price risks. The claim requires that a person initiate transactions with commodities purchases at a fixed price based on historic averages, identify other purchasers having a different risk position, and then initiate transactions with those other purchasers.

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In two recent prominent disputes in the World Trade Organization (WTO), developing country complainants are using the WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to induce compliance with favorable WTO rulings. Brazil in the US – Cotton dispute and Antigua in the US – Gambling case announced their intention to “cross-retaliate” against WTO-inconsistent measures of the US by suspending obligations under TRIPS. This approach can offer a practical alternative enforcement mechanism especially for developing countries and smaller economies in disputes against (industrialized) countries with significantly greater economic power in international trade.

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PIJIP has compared the US Trade Representative's 2008 Special 301 Report to input it received from the copyright-owner and pharmaceutical industries. The Special 301 Report identifies IP policies and practices in foreign countries which the US government considers harmful to American IP owners. The PIJIP comparison shows that the US government is fairly responsive to industry, although some industry recommendations carry more weight than others.

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On April 16, Elizabeth Docteur presented the results of a forthcoming OECD Health Division study of different national pricing policies; their effects on international price levels for drugs; and their effect on future pharmaceutical innovation. As drug pricing information becomes more available to policymakers, prices have started to converge, a fact that has influenced industry pricing strategies.

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Nearly seven years ago, my colleague Josh Sarnoff and I came to WCL to join a pioneering collaboration between IP scholars Peter Jaszi and Christine Farley and feminist and clinical scholar Ann Shalleck to help them launch one of the nation’s first intellectual property law clinics. One of the natural, wonderful and wacky by-products of this intense working group and its pooled expertise in intellectual property and gender issues was the idea for a symposium series focusing on the largely unexplored intersection of intellectual property and gender.

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A recent Indian news story describes the reticence of the government to issue compulsory licenses in cases that are not health emergencies, or for export. An official at the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion indicates that "There is no point in going in for CL unless there is an epidemic which impacts a large chunk of the population, and needs immediate solution."

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In this article, I discuss the nature and strength of the patent law presumption of validity in varying procedural and substantive contexts. The article is available in PDF format here: http://www.cardozoaelj.net/issues/08/Sarnoff.pdf

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The answers to some of filmmakers’ most common clearance questions don’t really lie in the realm of “fair use” at all, but fall under the heading of “free use.” This blog lists some examples.

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USTR’s annual Special 301 Report identifies countries viewed as denying sufficient intellectual property protection to US companies. If a country is listed as a “priority foreign country” in the report, USTR may initiate a formal investigation of the country within 30 days – the first step in the process of imposing bilateral trade sanctions against a country.

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There is a battle brewing in the federal courts over the rights of states to adopt the same prescription data privacy regulations that now exist in Europe and much of Canada. In those countries, pharmaceutical companies are not permitted to buy and sell prescription records that identify the prescribing habits of specific health care professionals, but rather can only access aggregate prescription data showing, for example, the number of prescriptions issued for a particular drug in a broad geographic area. New Hampshire, in passing its Prescription Confidentiality Act , was the first state in the nation to ban the trade in prescriber-identified prescription data for marketing purposes.

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