This article is republished with permission from IP Watch
By William New
Revised EPO Patent For Conventional Broccoli Has Public Interest Ramifications
To patent or not to patent, the great broccoli question
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A patent for a conventionally bred form of the common household vegetable broccoli appears to be on its way to acceptance by the European Patent Office following a change to the patent by the company filing it, according to sources. The decision not to revoke the patent, which has been the subject of protests and now calls for action in national courts, could clear the way for hundreds of other vegetable patents to follow, a source said.
In a rather legal format, the EPO announced on 25 October that an oral hearing in the so-called “broccoli” case had been cancelled, which observers say clears the way for approval of the patent in question. The cancellation of hearing came from the removal of objection by competing companies to the patent filer.
The move calls into question the bounds of patentability on plants and animals, after the EPO appeal board last year rejected patents on conventional breeding such as occurs in nature. The European Patent Office Enlarged Board of Appeal was asked to review the patentability of a grant on broccoli, and another patent on a tomato. The patented broccoli and tomato plants were not genetically modified, but rather simply bred conventionally as farmers have done for ages, according to sources.
Plant varieties are not patentable and are protected under a sui generis system at the International Union for the Protection of Plant Varieties (UPOV).
The board in December 2010 decided that “essentially biological processes for the production of plants (or animals)” are excluded from patentability (IPW, Biodiversity/Genetic Resources/Biotech,10 December 2010).
The broccoli and tomato cases, one patented by Plant Bioscience Ltd. (EP 1069819) and the other by the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture (EP 1211926), had been brought before the EPO’s Enlarged Board of Appeal after France-based seed cooperative Limagrain Group, Swiss biotech company Syngenta, and multinational food company Unilever filed complaints, respectively. Plant Bioscience already markets in the United Kingdom a “new variety” of broccoli made from conventional breeding methods.
Merger approved by Competition Commission, but Tamedia recently accused of “abuse”
Recycling newspapers: it's taking longer to fill up the bin
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Tamedia and Edipresse, two of Switzerland’s largest print and online media companies, will celebrate their marriage sooner than expected. The complete merger was expected in 2013, but the companies now say they will merge this year, when Tamedia’s purchase of 50.1 percent of the shares is completed.
Tamedia will spend a total of between CHF269.8 and 330.2 million, plus 250,000 registered Tamedia shares, to buy out Edipresse, it says in a press release issued 7 April.
The news comes as the shakeout of Swiss media continues, with several developments in recent days:
- newspapers in French-speaking Switzerland again had a serious bleed of readers in 2010, including the number one, free paper 20 Minutes, Mach (industry agency that tallies official circulation figures) reported 22 March 2011, with German-speaking areas doing better, but nevertheless seeing falling sales
- Tamedia was accused 1 April of abusing its position of power following its takeover of Edipresse, for sharply increasing advertising rates
- five regional newspapers joined forces this week, with a shared platform starting 5 April for international, national and business/economic news.
French language papers in “free fall”
Remp publishes an annual Mach reports in March of every year on how Swiss media fared the previous year, with sales and circulation details which serve as the bible of the advertising industry.
Circulation figures have been falling for a number of years but the process appears to have speeded up in 2010, with public television TSR reported that French-speaking newspapers in particular were in “free fall” last year, in terms of losing readers.
Republished with permission from IP Watch
By Catherine Saez
World Health Organization (WHO) members 19 January raised strong concerns that a working group they mandated last May to address problems with WHO policy on counterfeit and substandard medicines has yet to be formed – with four months remaining before it must report back to members.
One delegation called for a halt to WHO activities on anti-counterfeiting until the outcome of the working group is accepted by member states.
WHO Director General Margaret Chan told members of the WHO Executive Board today that a first meeting of a dedicated working group would be held in late February. The Board is meeting from 17-25 January.
Countries said falsified medicines were a threat for global public health but according to some delegates, the solution cannot be dominated by intellectual property rights enforcement concerns.
The UN health agency’s HIV/Aids strategy also was discussed Tuesday with a request from countries to emphasize prevention.
Ed. note: The IP Watch story was run Friday 4 June just as Australian police announced they are opening an investigation into Google’s Street View mapping methods there. The company called a halt to its vehicles in Australia in May.
By William New
IP Watch, republished with permission
Geneva, Switzerland – Legally speaking, there is “little doubt” that Google’s collection of WiFi data by its roving StreetView vehicles does not comply with the Swiss Data Protection Act, and the company is likely to come under new scrutiny in Switzerland possibly even resulting in “severe financial consequences,” a respected Swiss law firm has said. In a brief circulated yesterday, available here [1], the technology, media and telecoms practice of Geneva- and Lausanne-based BCCC law firm predicted that Google is likely to fall under new
scrutiny by the Swiss Data Protection Authority after a US federal court order barred the internet company from destroying data and ordering it to turn over two copies of the hard drive with the data.
Google also called attention to itself when, in response to an order from German officials to turn over data it had collected from WiFi networks within a certain deadline, it did not comply and instead sought more time to determine whether such a handover could violate communication regulations, the firm said. Google had first insisted the data were not as extensive as it later had to admit they are.
The company is likely to face continuing legal, oversight, and public trust problems in Europe and the United States for its involvement in, and handling of concern about, its collection of data, BCCC said.
Google’s data collection likely does not comply with requirements under Article 4 of the Swiss Data Protection Act, BCCC said, citing the principles of: legality – prohibiting deceitful data collection; good faith – requiring people to be fully informed; proportionality – only data that is necessary; finality – only used in the manner disclosed.
Google was not reached for this story.
The situation presents a difficult legal question for any high-tech company, [BCCC] said, as it must ensure its IT infrastructure and software not expose it to liability. “In a time when privacy is highly valued by citizens and customers, one should not be surprised to have a court consider a lack of due diligence or implementation of robust procedures to ensure users’ privacy and legal compliance as a fault, no matter how costly such as an audit is,” they concluded, “with potentially severe financial consequences not to mention the damage reputation suffered which might be hard to recover.”
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GenevaLunch has a fresher look and some new features, with more to come in the next few days. The site is faster as well, part of our efforts to make your visit enjoyable and informative. Read the details on the editor’s blog: Editor’s Notepad.
The Times and the Sunday Times in the UK will begin to lead separate online lives in May and they will charge for their services, £1 for a day and £2 for a week, in an effort to make news production economically viable. “The move opens a new front in the battle for readership and will be watched closely by the industry,” reports the BBC. The new policy starts in June. UK news media, like those in the US, have seen dramatic falls in advertising revenue and in September 2009 the UK became the first major economy to spend more on Internet than on TV ads.
US newspapers announced this week that their advertising revenue fell by 27 percent in 2009, making it the worst year for the industry since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Swiss Federal Council (cabinet), 2010
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s cabinet, the seven-member Swiss Federal Council, which governs as a body of equals, has published its official photo for 2010. Left to right: Didier Burkhalter, the chancellor for the Swiss Confederation Corina Casanova, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, Ueli Maurer, Micheline Calmy-Rey, Hans-Rudolf Merz, Swiss President Doris Leuthard, Vice-president Moritz Leuenberger. The presidency is a one-year rotating position, while the chancellor’s job is to oversee the smooth functioning of the administrative side of the government.
China’s Xinhua state news agency will begin television news broadcasts as China Xinhua News Network Corporation (CNC) in early 2010, available in much of the Asia-Pacific region and “some European countries”, in Chinese. By July 2010 CNC expects to offer some news in English, as part of what it describes as its efforts “to transform itself into a multi-media world news agency. It started to provide multi-media service in Chinese in December 2008 and English multi-media service in July 2009.” In addition to TV broadcasts the company plans to expand its news services to mobile phones and LED screens.
Links to other sites: WSJ Chinese blog, Xinhua, Yahoo news
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Jean-Jacques Roth, who has just resigned as editor in chief of Le Temps newspaper, has been named to head the joint television-radio news team at the recently created Radio Television Suisse Romande (RTSR). The new entity is the result of the merger of public radio and television stations RSR and TSR, which join forces in January 2010. The two are already part of SSR, the Swiss public broadcasting company.
Roth is the only outsider of the eight person senior management team named Monday 21 December. The news teams will be coordinated, but remain separate, with Bernard Rappaz heading television news and Patrick Nussbaum heading the radio team.
The complete management group:
Don Hewitt, who died in New York at age 86, is a name who might not be known to households across the US, but he’s known to media people as a journalist who had a major impact on the development of US broadcast journalism: he was the creator of “60 Minutes”, arguably one of the most influential news background programmes on television, and when he left his role there in 2004 he became executive producer of CBS News. Hewitt’s career spanned nearly 60 years, most of it with CBS. The “60 Minutes” staff are preparing an hour-long show on his career, to air at 19:00 Eastern US time Sunday 23 August.
image: WhmSoft
Legendary US broadcaster Walter Cronkite has died, age 92, at his home in Connecticut. Cronkite represented, for many Americans, an era of reassuring television news that has been replaced by multiple news sources and multimedia. Cronkite’s son Chip announced that his father had died of complications of dementia.
The International Herald Tribune/NY Times summarizes the role he played: “From 1962 to 1981, Mr. Cronkite was a nightly presence in American homes and always a reassuring one, guiding viewers through national triumphs and tragedies alike, from moonwalks to war, in an era when network news was central to many people’s lives.”
To those of you who subscribe to our Google/Feedburner rss e-mail feed, please note that it failed to include several articles from Wednesday 15 July. We’re sorry that you missed them and unfortunately have no explanation for this, but here they are: EPFL mathematicians crack elliptical curve encryption problem, Vaud and Schumacher agree to small dock, shoreline group opposed, Alinghi accused by US club of secretly plotting with Intl Sailing Federation, C0ngo people fail to get Mobutu money, Soldier killed, another injured, in parachute crash
