IPTango: patent law reform

Showing posts with label patent law reform. Show all posts

Wednesday, 28 October 2015

Reforming Paten Law: the debate continues

Patricia Covarrubia October 28, 2015 No comments:

On 20th October, the Associação Brasileira da Propriedade Intelectual (ABPI)’s president spoke at a public hearing at the Comissão de Constituição e Justiça e Cidadania (Committee on Constitution, Justice and Citizenship) of the House of Representatives. In the speech it was clear that the ABPI opposed to reform to be brought by Bill 139/1999 and 5402/13 due to these not having sufficient technical analysis and without the necessary analysis discussions with parties involved such as the pharma industry and researchers. The proposed changes are according to ABPI, substantial changes to Brazilian Patent Law N. 9279 of 14 May 1996 (Law 9279/96).

What is going on?

What my mum think I do!

On 4th October our tanguera and Brazilian friend Magda Voltolini, wrote a guest post on the topic ‘Brazilian Politicians will vote for new Pharma Laws’. Here she notes that the Bill aims to modify “the provisions concerning rights awarded by the patent and conditions that grant compulsory licenses including those relating to pharmaceutical products and processes.” (full post here).

ABPI’s position
ABPI’s opposing to the reforms, points out the “technical failures of each of the ten amendments proposed in the Bills that, if approved, will impact negatively on the country's economy on innovative initiatives and investments in R & D”.

Rebutting allegations of patent abuse, ABPI’s president noted that the present Law already contains safeguards against abuses by patent. She pointed out that in Brazil there exist a misunderstanding with the term ‘extension’ referring to the term of patents, noting that ‘extension’ is an act of public administration, and “only granted when there is a fulfilment of all legal requirements”. Finally, she emphasized that any debate on patent should always be aimed at the modernization of IP infrastructure and R & D.

Source ABPI.

Far away but close to home

Patricia Covarrubia September 12, 2011 No comments:

Just a note to inform our members that make use of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to register a national invention in this country that last week the U.S. Senate passed patent form legislation which will overturn U.S. patent policy. The reform will award patents to inventors who are “first to file” their invention with the USPTO rather than the “first to invent” principle. The legislation now heads to President Obama for signing.

Derogan patentes de farmacéuticos en Ecuador

Aurelio Lopez-Tarruella Martinez October 19, 2009 No comments:

El Presidente de Ecuador, Rafael Correa, anunció en su revista semanal que pasara un decreto por el cual derogará las patentes farmacéuticas en Ecuador. La medida obligará a las farmacéuticas trasnacionales a otorgar licencias para que dichas medicinas se produzcan nacionalmente. Indica también, que en un futuro cercano dicha medida se extenderá a los agroquímicos. Sin embargo, el Jefe de Estado explica que habrán excepciones como las ‘medicinas cosméticas y ciertas medicinas no indispensables’.

Debemos notar con mucho cuidado la idea socialista de su discurso, pues el Presidente deja entrever que el derecho a la Propiedad Intelectual es un derecho que le ocasiona fortuna solo a las empresas trasnacionales. Hay que observar también, que en su alocución pareciera que en un futuro tal derecho no existirá en otras áreas, posiblemente, ¿derecho de autor? ¿diseños? Específicamente, el Presidente clama “Empezaremos con medicina, pero luego continuaremos con agroquímicos y con otra clase de conocimientos que, insistimos, consideramos que son bienes públicos necesarios para la prosperidad humana y no pueden ser privatizados".

A pesar que el Presidente Ecuatoriano dice que será el pionero en esta clase de política, esta misma estrategia ya ha sido clamada por otros presidentes latinoamericanos, como por ejemplo Hugo Chávez de Venezuela, Daniel Ortega, de Nicaragua y Evo Morales de Bolivia.

Si dichas políticas siguen extendiéndose a otros sectores de la Propiedad Intelectual, estaríamos en presencia de una gran parte de países Latino Americanos que no reconoce este derecho privado. Al parecer estos ‘presidentes revolucionarios’ olvidan que la Propiedad Intelectual no solo tiene beneficios sociales y económicos, sino también morales. Adicionalmente, la parte económica del derecho no solo protege a las trasnacionales sino también a sus propios nacionales y por ello deben ser más cautelosos.

Esta propuesta puede repercutir en la economía de el propio país; ejemplos de esto se observan en Cuba donde hace poco la Unión Andina de Patentes reportaba que el aumento de patentes de Cubanos en Estados Unidos ha aumentado pues estos buscan proteger sus inversiones. Otro modelo sería Venezuela, donde se reporta que la mayoría de empresas trasnacionales han dejado esta jurisdicción. Sin duda alguna, esto conllevaría a otros problemas como seria que fabricantes de medicinas no exporten estas a países donde no se respeten las patentes.

Dicho esto, ¿Que buscan dichas políticas socialistas? ¿Es en realidad la Propiedad Intelectual un derecho solo monopolista?

Prepared by Patricia Covarrubia (Visiting Lecturer University of Buckingham), posted by Aurelio

Mexico considers new patent reform bills

Jeremy February 02, 2009 No comments:

The Mexican Senate is currently considering two bills to amend its Industrial Property Law. One proposes a fundamental review of the law, while the other aims to introduce a procedure for opposing patent grants and penalties for abusive practices in the enforcement of invalid patents.

The first bill, supported by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, was apparently devised with pharmaceutical research and development in mind. Domestic generic manufacturers have objected that patent holders can extend the term of their patents, thus blocking market entry for generic medicaments; the objection has also been raised that third parties use the extension procedure to delay the prosecution of patent applications. Provisions covering abusive enforcement have been strongly opposed, since small entities and individual inventors might be left to bear crippling liabilities if they try to enforce a patent that later becomes invalid.

The second bill, proposed by the Green Ecology Party, would bring Mexico's IP legislation in line with global norms of industrial property. In particular it would establish time limits for filing divisional applications and voluntary amendments to claims, allow for the issue of certified copies in electronic format, let the public submit information about the patentability of a published application and increase the term for replying to Patent Office actions from two to three months. The proposal also suggests making computer-implemented inventions patentable where the invention incorporates a technical contribution.

Source: José Antonio Romero (Becerril, Coca and Becerril SC), writing in International Law Office.

Some IPTango moves

* Listed as one of the "Best blogs on Intellectual and Industrial Property Law". The University of Alicante Intellectual Property & Information Technology Project (UAIPIT).

* One of the only two Latin American blog listed in the "Top 100 Intellectual Property Blogs". Feedspot, as of May 2021.

* Listed as one of the "Top 15 Blogs For An Intellectual Property (IP) Enthusiasts". Buzzfeed.com, January 2017.

* Listed as one of the "World's Best IP Blogs". BananaIP.com, December 2015.

* IPTango founder Professor Jeremy Phillips was listed as one of the Managing Intellectual Property magazine's "Fifty Most Influential People" of 2005, 2011, 2013, and 2014.

* Listed as one of the "Influential intellectual property blawgs". A Dictionary of Intellectual Property Law, Peter Groves, 2011.

* Listed as one of the "Communities of Blawgers". Los blogs jurídicos y la web 2.0. para la difusión y la enseñanza del derecho, Gonzalo Ramírez Cleves, 2010.