Global Intellectual Property System Research Articles

Applying Digital Competence Framework in Exploiting Information for Commercialisation of Intellectual Property Rights Purposes

Vietnam has promulgated the policy system on intellectual property based on the principle of balancing the rights of the owner and the legitimate interests of the society, in accordance with the level of economic development of the country, towards the general development trend in the global intellectual property system. However, difficulties in commercializing intellectual property rights in the digital economy are still existed.
 This article analyzes the barriers in the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights leading to difficulties in commercializing intellectual property rights in the digital economy, and proposes that applying the digital competency framework in exploiting information to commercialize intellectual property rights can be a solution.
 Keyword: Intellectual Property; Digital Competence Framework; Information on Exploiting Intellectual Property; Commercialisation of Intellectual Property Rights.
 

ТРАНСФОРМАЦІЯ НАЦІОНАЛЬНИХ ЕКОНОМІКО-ПРАВОВИХ ПРОЦЕСІВ НА ОСНОВІ ПАТЕНТНОЇ ОХОРОНИ БІОТЕХНОЛОГІЧНИХ ВИНАХОДІВ

Досліджено особливості патентної охорони біотехнологічних винаходів як чинника трансформації національних економіко-правових процесів. Установлено, що умови для отримання патенту на біотехнологічні винаходи відрізняються від умов патентування в інших сферах, зважаючи на те, що усі винаходи в галузі біотехнології прямо або опосередковано є продуктом природи. Акцентовано на важливості чіткого розмежування між відкриттям природного явища і новим об’єктом інтелектуальної власності. Охарактеризовано критерії патентування для винаходів у галузі біотехнології. Обґрунтовано, що однакові стандарти патентування винаходів у галузі біотехнології неможливо застосовувати в різних правових системах, тому відповідні рішення повинні ухвалюватися, виходячи з положень національного права. Установлено, що нормативно-правове регулювання патентування винаходів у галузі біотехнології потребує удосконалення з урахуванням особливостей біотехнологічних об’єктів інтелектуальної власності.

The World Intellectual Property Organization and the sustainable development agenda

The UN’s Agenda for Sustainable Development is being taken up throughout the international system, including at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). This article examines WIPO’s approach to the sustainable development agenda in light of its past approaches to development. In the first part of this article, I outline some of the longstanding major critiques of the discourse of sustainability, noting that these critiques anticipated the current lamentable status of a sustainable development agenda for WIPO. Next, I discuss the history of development agendas at WIPO in the context of WIPO’s history and role at the centre of the global intellectual property system. I then ask what role intellectual property has to play in the SDGs. I conclude by suggesting that an adequate agenda for sustainable development is unlikely to be developed at WIPO and must, rather, come from outside.

The Impact of the TRIPS Agreement on the Access to Antiretroviral Therapy in Sub-Saharan Africa

This dissertation analyses the impact that the current global intellectual property system is having on the access to antiretroviral treatment in Sub-Saharan Africa. HIV/AIDS is causing an unprecedented public health crisis in the region, where approximately 1.2 million die every year of AIDS-related diseases. Despite the fact that a life-saving treatment exists, the high prices on antiretroviral drugs make them inaccessible to a vast number of patients. This is the direct consequence of the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which entered into force in 1994, by virtue of which signatory states agreed to implement standardized intellectual property protection within their domestic laws. Now, States are required to grant patents to any new invention by a pharmaceutical corporation, which give it the exclusive right to use, manufacture and market the pharmaceutical good for a period of 20 years, thus preventing generic competition. Consequently, patent holders are entitled to freely set the prices on their drugs, which tend to be excessively high. Notwithstanding, the TRIPS agreement establishes a set of opt-out clauses for those cases of national emergency caused by a public health crisis. Governments are given the option to grant compulsory licenses on patented drugs to national manufacturers and to allow for parallel import of patented drugs in order to make them available at affordable prices in the national territory, under the fulfillment of certain requirements. However, the U.S. and the E.U. have continuously opposed to the use of TRIPS-get out clauses under the menace of trade retaliations, and multinational pharmaceutical corporations have threaten to file law suits against those governments issuing compulsory licenses and allowing for parallel import of their drugs. Further, the U.S and the E.U. have celebrated free trade agreements with developing states containing obligations that hinder the use of TRIPS-get out clauses. Despite the attempts by the international community and the civil society to enhance the access to antiretroviral treatment in the developing world, at the present date many eligible patients cannot afford the high prices on antiretroviral drugs. Thus, it renders necessary that the TRIPS Agreement is amended in order to establish a more balanced system, which ensures that not only the interests of pharmaceutical corporations but also the interests of patients are met.

Corporate 'Human Rights' to Intellectual Property Protection

The global intellectual property system protects the interests of intellectual property owners, sometimes to the detriment of competing interests like public health or access to knowledge. Some scholars have proposed a human rights framework for intellectual property as a way to inject balance into the current system. However, the assertion that human rights will bring balance is often coupled with the assumption that corporations are, by definition, excluded from human rights-based intellectual property claims. Yet, corporations have used, and are likely to continue to use, human rights law to ground their intellectual property claims. Since multinational corporations were a major driving force behind increased global intellectual property standards, a human rights framework for intellectual property must contemplate the likelihood that corporations will attempt to co-opt a human rights model in order to bolster their intellectual property claims. Moreover, framing intellectual property interests from a human rights perspective can affect our conceptions of intellectual property and our analysis of the relationship between intellectual property rights and other interests. This Article contends that there is value in using human rights law to limit excessive intellectual property protection. However, promoting a human right to intellectual property protection could have the unfortunate effect of further entrenching rights that have already increased significantly in recent years.

Patents and Pharmaceutical R&D: Consolidating Private-Public Partnership Approach to Global Public Health Crises

Intellectual property (IP) is a reward and incentive market-driven mechanism for fostering innovation and creativity. The underlying, but disputed, assumption to this logic is that without IP, the wheel of innovation and inventiveness may grind to a halt or spin at a lower and unhelpful pace. This conventional justification of IP enjoys, perhaps, greater empirical credibility with the patent regime than with other regimes. Despite the inconclusive role of patents as a stimulant for research and development (R&D), special exception is given to patent's positive impact on innovation and inventiveness in the pharmaceutical sector. This article focuses on that sector and links the palpable disconnect between the current pharmaceutical R&D agenda and global public health crises, especially access to drugs for needy populations, to a flaw in the reward and incentive theory of the patent system. It proposes a creative access model to the benefits of pharmaceutical research by pointing in the direction of a global treaty to empower and institutionalize private–public partnerships in health care provisions. Such a regime would restore balance in the global IP system that presently undermines the public-regarding considerations in IP jurisprudence.

Patents and Traditional Medicine: Digital Capture, Creative Legal Interventions, and the Dialectics of Knowledge Transformation

This article examines the debate over the exclusion of indigenous or local knowledge forms from the global intellectual property system, and some of the current attempts to solve this problem. Using the lens of cultural cosmopolitanism, the article highlights important trends in the dialectics of developing countries’ engagement with intellectual property and other collateral knowledge protection systems. The three sites at which this significant development is unfolding are: (1) the digitization of traditional medicinal knowledge through India’s traditional knowledge digital library (TKDL) project; (2) a recent attempt at incorporating innovations in Chinese Herbal Medicine (CHM) in Taiwanese patent law; and (3) efforts to enshrine disclosure of origin requirements (DRs) in patent applications, and developments around geographical indications (GIs).