Category: Intellectual Property

New Dimensions in Legal Adaptation to Global Dynamics

Moi University, Eldoret, is holding its 8th Annual International Conference in September.

The programme

Symposium IV
School of Law
Theme: “New Dimensions in Legal Adaptation to Global Dynamics
International and Comparative Perspectives”
Sub Themes
1. Constitutional law
2. Gender and family law
3. International trade, commerce and investment law (including intellectual property and information
technology law)
4. Public international law
5. Environmental law
6. International criminal law (including transitional justice and international humanitarian law)
School Symposium Organising Committee
Mr. H. J. A. Lugulu – Dean, School of Law
Mr. J. I. Ayamunda – Coordinator
Mr. J. O. Ambani – Member
Ms. L. Khaemba – Member
Prof. N. W. Sifuna – Member
Mr. M. Oduor – Member
Mr. V. Mutai – Member

On Thursday, September 6, 2012, there are sessions not to miss:

10.30 am–11.00 am Session 1
Room: 4 A
Chair: I.M. Orina Rapporteur: Emmy Soi/J Ambani
4#16
TRIPS Article 27(3)b and its Impact on Agriculture for Kenya
Constance Gikonyo
11.00 am–11.20 am 4#05
Intellectual Property Laws and Regional Integration: A Case for Harmonisation in the
East African Community States
J Ayamunda and J Wabwire
11.20 am–11.40 am 4#25
International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA):
Kenyan Agenda
Duncan Kiboyye Okoth-Yogo

Global Governance of Genetic Resources

Global Governance of Genetic Resources: Access and Benefit Sharing after the Nagoya Protocol (Routledge Research in Global Environmental Governance) edited by Sebastian Oberthür and Kristin Rosendal is to be to be published 1st March 2013 by Routledge. Running to 272 pages, it analyses the status and prospects of the global governance of Access Benefit Sharing (ABS) following the 2010 Nagoya Protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The CBD’s initial 1992 framework of global ABS governance established the objective of sharing the benefits arising from the use of genetic resources fairly between countries and communities. Since then, ABS has been a contested issue in international politics – not least due to the failure of effective implementation of the original CBD framework. The Nagoya Protocol therefore aims to improve and enhance this framework. Compared to the slow rate of progress on climate change, it has been considered a major achievement of global environmental governance, but it has also been coined a ‘masterpiece of ambiguity’. This book analyses the role of a variety of actors in the emergence of the Nagoya Protocol and provides an up-to-date assessment of the core features of the architecture of global ABS governance.

Sebastian Oberthür is Academic Director of the Institute for European Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium, and  Kristin Rosendal is a research Professor at Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Norway.

 

8th EGA Legal Affairs Forum

The European Generics Association will be hosting the 8th EGA Legal Affairs Forum between the 22 and 23 March 2012 in Brussels.

It will feature an interesting programme including:

Recent developments on SPCs:
• SPCs caselaw and legislation update

  • – The galanthamine and the memantine decisions
  • – The Medeva and the Georgetown references to the CJEU
  • – Paediatric extensions: negative term SPCs

• Combination products in the pipeline

  • – the effect of the Medeva judgment

• Litigating SPCs around Europe – escitalopram case study

  • – What is the product/active ingredient? Regulatory and litigation strategies

• Roundtable presentations on national escitalopram SPC cases: Germany, France, The Netherlands, Belgium
Maximising legal professional privilege:
• Privilege in litigation in Europe
(General overview, comparing approach in different Member States)
• Privilege and European Commission investigations/patent settlement cases
(The Akzo Nobel case, practical issues arising from investigations – privilege and disclosure, update on the Commission’s investigations into patent settlements)
Patent enforcement in Europe:

  • Views on the review of Directive 2004/48/EC on the enforcement of IP rights
  • Views on the changes in the EU patent system: single court and patent with unitary effect
  • Update on court cases that impact the industry

The Full Programme can be found here and it starts with a welcome buffet lunch sponsored by Bird & Bird.

Traditional Knowledge and Intellectual Property

Johanna Gibson’s “Traditional Knowledge and Intellectual Property: Law and Practice” won’t be released by the OUP until July, but at 704 pages, it looks well worth the wait. What will be in it? Topics promised include benefit-sharing, ownership, creation of intellectual property rights, disclosure of origin, coherence and consistency with international intellectual property regimes. For those who already have “Community Resources: Intellectual Property, International Trade and Protection of Traditional Knowledge”, 2005, ISBN: 0754644367, this work promises much.

Johanna Gibson is Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law and Director of the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute (QMIPRI) and many of us will know her past contributions to the excellent IPKat blog (IPKat is a registered Community Trade Mark 🙂

Is the Value of Bioprospecting Contracts too low?

This is a challenging question indeed, which is addressed in the current issue of  The International Journal of Ecological Economics and Statistics (Vol. 26, Issue No.3, 2012) in its special volume titled “Socioeconomics and Management of Bioprospecting“.
The question of “Is the Value of Bioprospecting Contracts Too Low?” is the title of the Markanya and Nunes paper. As they say:

“In this paper we seek to understand better how a biodiversity resource use value in production is determined, and how the real value is obscured by the fact that the resource is largely open access. We attempt to analyse how  special arrangements, set on top of a basic framework in which the resource open access is limited in what it can achieve and in the ‘price’ that will emerge from any transaction between the buyers of the rights and the sellers of the rights. The whole volume allows us to read the  ideas presented at last October’s CBD conference in Nagoya.”

There is of course a lot more to read:

“This volume is therefore characterized by a selection of papers that address issues such as: incentives for R&D in the economic sectors that use products of bioprospecting; implications of recent legal changes on access to genetic resources on sharing of knowledge; understanding better the nature of partnerships for access and benefit sharing in diverse sectors that use genetic materials; the nature of special agreements for access and benefit sharing and why they result in a low market price for the ‘owners’ of the resources;”Yoy

If not immediately reading the whole text, the abstracts are available at: The International Journal of Ecological Economics and Statistics (Vol. 26, Issue No.3, 2012)