The U.S. House of Representatives is now debating the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)—the counterpart to the Senate’s PROTECT IP Act. If passed, the bill will expand criminal penalties for copyright infringement and give the government (and private parties) new…
Carol Nogueira and Julianna Granjeia report in Folha.com that a Brazilian court has ruled DJs do not need to pay royalties for samples of songs used in public performances at clubs. Judge Cláudia Longobardi Campana found that the use of…
Groups Seek Generic Competition for Abbott’s Patented Lifesaving Treatments WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, public health groups in a dozen countries launch a campaign to challenge Abbott Laboratories’ monopolistic hold on lopinavir+ritonavir (also known as Kaletra or Aluvia), a critical HIV/AIDS…
U.S. Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante has published a report outlining the “Priorities and Special Projects of the U.S. Copyright Office” for the next two years. According to the copyright office press release: “Rogue websites, illegal streaming, small claims, orphan…
A new EU Greens/ European Free Alliance position paper starts from the premise that copyright should guard against unauthorized commercial use, but individuals should be able to copy and share works as long as the author is cited. It proposes…
When we last left the European Commission, it was continuing its pursuit of SMUS (Send Money to the US) based IP policies. We raised some questions about the wisdom of this strategy. But there is also a different EC conversation…
The Obama administration’s proposal to reduce U.S. deficits contains two provisions dealing with intellectual property and healthcare. The proposal would reduce data exclusivity for biologic medicines to 7 years (from the current period of 12 years), and would “prohibit additional…
On September 6, a Division Branch of the Supreme Court of India was going to hear Novartis’ challenge to the Appellate Decision that prevented it from patenting imatinib messylate, but Judge Dalveer Bhandari recused himself and sent the matter to…
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that “the first sale doctrine, which allows a person who buys a legally produced copyrighted work to sell or otherwise dispose of the work as he sees fit, does not apply…
An interagency Working Group headed by the Office IP Enforcement Coordinator and including staff from the Office of Management and Budget, Department of Defense, NASA, and the General Services Administration has been formed to “eliminate counterfeit products from the U.S.…
Copyright owners have greatly increased the number of lawsuits for filesharing in the U.S., and have sued 201,828 John Does since the beginning of 2010. TorrentFreak has published data on the cases, and describes them as part of a “pay-up-or-else…
The UK plans to modernize intellectual property law by implementing the recommendations in the May 2010 Hargreaves report. It announcement highlighted reforms including exceptions to copyright for private copying, parody, and text and data mining by researchers, as well as…