WHO headquarters in Geneva
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Geneva prides itself on its international role, but if you sense that the city’s native sons and daughters are outnumbered by foreign guests at the moment, you’re right. Runners, weather and climate specialists, world health workers have all converged on the city for three weeks of events.
Geneva Marathon has massive increase in runners
The Geneva Marathon races 14-15 May brought out 5,700 runners, a massive increase of 2,100 over the 2010 race, and they were cheered on by 47,000 spectators. This year’s Marathon for Unicef also saw a sharp increase in international participation, with runners from 191 countries. The winner of the men’s marathon was Ethiopian Hailu Begashaw, and Pascale Prevel from France won the women’s marathon. Geneva-based New Zealander Guy Simpson came in second in the men’s and Tsige Germa from Ehtiopia was third.
Weather and disaster preparedness the focus at Meteorological Congress
The World Meteorological Congress opens Monday 16 May and runs until 3 June. A key item on the agenda is a new recommendation to create a Global Framework for Climate Services. The recommendation was made last week, as part of a report and plan of action to help countries adapt to climate change, approved in Geneva during the Global Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction meeting.
World Health Assembly opens with several contentious issues on the agenda
(video) Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Data released 16 September by Wipo, the World Intellectual Property Organization based in Geneva, shows a slowdown in IP registrations in 2008 and, based on partial data, in 2009, but the global picture is mixed. IP registrations include patent, trademark and industrial design applications, with industrial design applications suffering less from the glocal economic downturn than the other two categories.
The one country that bucked the mostly downward trend was China, although it accounted for an overall fall in trademark applications in 2008 while remaining the country with the largest number of trademark requests, 670,000.
The figures are part of the World Intellectual Property Indicators 2010, published by Wipo, with figures mainly from 2008-09.
Patents: applications, grants down
The number of patents granted in 2008 is estimated to have fallen by 0.6 percent, to 780,000 for the year. South Korea alone had a 32.5 percent drop and the overall figure was saved from showing a serious global contraction by China’s growth in patent grants. The fastest growing area was in demand for energy-related patents: fuel cells, solar, wind and geothermal energy. Patent applications filed for those technologies increased in nine years nearly seven-fold, from 584 applications in 2000 to 3,424 applications in 2009.
Applications for patents fell in virtually every country in 2009, preliminary data show, down 10 percent in Japan and down 5 percent in South Korea, but China’s applications rose by 8 percent.
Some 6.7 million patents were in force worldwide in 2008, a 5.3 percent increase over 2007. Patents in force in China and the Republic of Korea saw double-digit growth at 24 percent and 10.1 percent, respectively.
Residents of Japan and the US owned around 48% of total patents in force in 2008.
Trademarks: Bric nations, 30% of applications
The Bric (Brazil, Russian Federation, India and China) countries accounted for 30 percent of all trademark applications in 2008, far above their combined share in patents. Overall, trademark applications fell by 0.9 percent in 2008, the first decrease since 2001. They rose again in 2009, first figures show, but only in some countries: China and France recorded considerable growth in trademarks filings, while Germany, Japan and the US reported a drop.
In 2008, approximately 2.37 million trademarks were registered across the world, 7 for percent growth compared to 2007. China accounted for around 90 percent of the worldwide growth in trademark registrations. It also recorded the highest growth in these registrations (+56.8 percent), followed by the UK (+23.6) and the Russian Federation (+21.7).
Industrial design registrations led by China
China saw a 17 percent increase in industrial design applications in 2008, accounting for much of the world’s total growth of 5.7 percent in this area. France in 2008 remained the country holding the largest number of these patents, some 400,000, but China is expected to overtake France in 2009.
Video, presentation of the World Indicators by Francis Gurry, head of Wipo in Geneva
Excerpt reprinted with permission from Intellectual Property Watch (full article)
WTO TRIPS Council considers workshop On public health amendment
By Kaitlin Mara
The World Trade Organization group on intellectual property rights met 2 March and ended early, discussing a potential workshop on an amendment intended to ease access to cheaper generic medicines in countries without a pharmaceutical manufacturing sector, a new proposal from Bolivia, and three separate longstanding IP [intellectual property] issues with no major changes.
Countries were unable to agree to hold a workshop on the so-called “paragraph 6” agreement, which allow countries to issue a compulsory license on drugs primarily intended for export to developing countries in need of cheaper generic versions and unable to manufacture them themselves.
Instead, the chair of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Council said he will hold informal consultations on the issue, though the details of when and how they will be conducted are not yet decided. The United States appears to be the main opponent of holding a workshop, according to several sources. For more background on this issue, see (IPW, WTO/TRIPS, 1 March 2010).
Reprinted in GenevaLunch with permission from IP Watch. IP Watch is a Geneva-based newsletter covering intellectual property issues.
By William New, editor, IP Watch
The United States Department of Justice yesterday told the US District Court for the Southern District of New York that progress had been made on its concerns in the settlement allowing internet search giant Google to scan millions of books into a searchable database. But the government lawyers continue to have doubts on copyright, class certification and antitrust issues, they said.
Justice made its views known in a 31-page filing [pdf] filed with the court on 4 February. While it praised efforts so far, the department said, “the amended settlement agreement suffers from the same core problem as the original agreement: it is an attempt to use the class action mechanism to implement forward-looking business arrangements that go far beyond the dispute before the court in this litigation.”
In The Authors Guild Inc. et al. v. Google Inc. case, the district court is scheduled to hold a hearing on the proposed amended settlement agreement on 18 February.
Lovely for football fans, but not the real thing: Swiss flag is a square
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss flag, the word “Swiss” and “Made in Switzerland” are getting logo-like protection, with tighter restrictions on their use in Switzerland and abroad. The Swiss Federal Council Wednesday 18 November recommended key changes to intellectual property coverage for “Swissness” that are designed to make up for a current lack of precision.
Consumers will benefit, says the government, noting that more than 50 percent of consumers in a recent poll said they would be willing to pay up to twice the price for several Swiss food products. Letter box companies will be hurt, says Bern, since they will no longer be able to say they are Swiss.
The legal changes are designed to ensure that the CHF6 billion a year, or 1 percent of Swiss GDP attributable to the idea of Swiss quality, has stronger legal backing.
The government calculates that the value added by a Swiss label can be as high as 20 percent for agricultural goods such as food and wine.
