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Summer Session
Registration for the International Intellectual Property Summer Session is now open for non-WCL students. Those wishing to register should visit the PIJIP page for more information about courses and summer faculty, or to complete the online registration.
Non-WCL students wishing to register for our Geneva courses should complete this online registration.
Email Lists
Pointing the Finger at Big Pharma - Dutch Seizure of Generic Medicines
Treatment and trade activists and developing countries are justly outraged at the decision of Dutch customs authorities to seize a cargo of 500 kilos of Losartan Potassium that was in transit in Rotterdam while on route from India to Brazil. The production of this API in India is completely lawful, as it is not under patent there, and its use in the formulation of medicines in Brazil is also lawful because there is no valid patent on the API or the final product in Brazil either. So, why did the Dutch customs officials have any even colorable jurisdiction to seize this in-transit shipment?
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Renewed Attack on Open Access in Congress
Yesterday Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) re-introduced the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act. This year it's H.R. 801 (last year it was H.R. 6845), and co-sponsored by Steve Cohen (D-TN), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Darrell Issa (R-CA), and Robert Wexler (D-FL). The bill language has not changed. Neither has the fact that there is no reasonable basis in law or in fact to support this legislation.
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Details Emerge of Secret ACTA Negotiation
There are plans for the next ACTA negotiation to take place in Rabat, Morocco. However, since none of the Obama trade people have been placed at USTR, this might be delayed. USTR is still maintaining secrecy over details of the negotiation, including the names of participants and all of the proposed texts for negotiations. Despite this, KEI has obtained some documents related to the negotiations. We can report the following...
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Is Pfizer Seeking a Trade Agreement to Raise the Price of the Medicines Donated to Programs in Developing Countries?
Pfizer CEO Jeff Kindler and Stanford Professor John Barton have written Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, proposing a new international framework on drug pricing. They had been asked by the Chairman to try to find a way to “protect our patents abroad but also demonstrate flexibility and compassion with respect to public health crises in the developing world.”
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Why the U.S. Lost Its WTO IP Complaint Against China. Badly.
The World Trade Organization yesterday released its much-anticipated decision involving a U.S. complaint against China over its protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights. The U.S. quickly proclaimed victory, with newspaper headlines trumpeting the WTO panel's requirement that China reform elements of its intellectual property laws. ...anyone who bothers to work through the 147 page decision will find that the headlines get it wrong. The U.S. did not win this case, but rather lost badly.
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Moving Forward After the WTO Panel Report in the US-China IP Enforcement Dispute
While interesting to see how this is framed by the Financial Times, I would reiterate what some are already saying which is that the US lost on the parts of the case that really mattered to it, which were whether China's enforcement practices were non-TRIPS compliant, especially where criminal sanctions for commercial scale infringement was concerned.
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Pfizer CEO and Stanford Professor Propose Pharma Reimbursement Treaty
Pfizer CEO Jeff Kindler and Stanford University Professor John Barton have written Senator Baucus announcing their intention to bring together stakeholders to begin work on a new international treaty framework to "discipline" pharmaceutical reimbursement practices around the globe.
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Intellectual Property and Price Discrimination - iTunes
There's a lot of debate about whether allowing or encouraging price discrimination - charging different people or classes of people a different price for the same good - is good policy with respect to goods that embody copyrighted works of authorship or patented inventions. The general population seems to have different reactions to different kinds of price discrimination schemes...
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Of Pills and Pumpkin Seeds: Pfizer Sues the Candyman
In mid-November, Pfizer filed suit seeking €36,000 in damages from Richard Mandl, an Austrian candy maker and pumpkin seed oil producer, for infringement of its Viagra mark. Pfizer claims that Mandl's light blue, oval-shaped, sugar- and chocolate-coated pumpkin seeds named "Styriagra" too closely resemble Viagra in name, shape, and color.
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Can You CC License Music and Still Make Money?
Yes. Nine Inch Nail's Ghosts I-IV was released under a CC license and was the best selling album in 2008 on Amazon's MP3 store. NIN fans could have gone to any file sharing network to download the entire CC-BY-NC-SA album legally. Many did, and thousands will continue to do so. So why would fans bother buying files that were identical to the ones on the file sharing networks? One explanation is the convenience and ease of use of NIN and Amazon's MP3 stores. But another is that fans understood that purchasing MP3s would directly support the music and career of a musician they liked.
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