Author name: Swaraj Paul Barooah

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India proposes new UN body for Internet related policies

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Image from here  Indirectly connected, yet relevant background stories: 1. US tries to extradite British student for the purely online activity of hosting a site that links to infringing material. Linked here. (In context: search engines such as Google do the same thing.) 2. “No! to ACTA” video gets more than 1 million hits – showing netizens’ interests in protecting their online freedom. Linked here.  (Short crisp video – Highly recommended watch!) 3. 108 top IP academics protest against ironically named “PROTECT-IP Act”. […]

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A Strange Brew of Tamiflu and Swine Flu

/ By / Patent

  Image taken from here  Everything surrounding the Swine Flu seems to be quite mysterious. Starting with allegations that the virus itself may have been a man-made product that got loose, to the scare being exaggerated to sell more drugs for it and put more money in Donald Rumsfield’s pockets, the events and scenarios existing around this disease are proving to be quite interesting. Yet there are more interesting  ingredients involved in this strange soup. Oseltamivir is one of the best drugs currently

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SpicyIP Tidbit: Indian generic companies now step into MPP

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Indian generics Aurobindo Pharma Limited and MedChem, yesterday joined the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) for the manufacture of several antiretroviral medicines. While Aurobindo is a well established generic unit which already produces antiretrovirals, MedChem is apparently a new comer into the HIV field. [The MPP is a patent pool which seeks to facilitate the innovation and production of ARVs in developing countries — we have written on it before here] This will allow Aurobindo to have access and produce the products that Gilead

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ACTA signing begins

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Today, a ceremony in Tokyo saw the first few countries start to sign the very controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Though 11 countries took part in the final negotiations last year, 8 of them actually signed it today. Australia, Canada, Japan, Republic of Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and the US were the 8 that signed it, while the EU, Mexico and Switzerland have not signed it yet.  The Agreement requires the ratification of 6 members and will come into

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Patent issues precede UN High level meet on NCDs

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For the first time since the General Assembly meet on HIV/AIDs ten years ago, the UN is having a ‘high-level’ meet to discuss health issues – more specifically the rising public health problem of non-communicable diseases from 19th – 20th September.  Non-Communicable Diseases or NCDs refer to the rising global problem of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and diabetes. According to the WHO, these account for over 63% of deaths (ie, about 36 million annually) about  in the world

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Wikileaks on IP related negotiations between India-US

/ By / Patent

Jamie Love over at KEI has brought to light a Wikileaks cable that may be of interest to our readers. In this post, I’ll highlight a few of the key IP issues that were discussed in this cable. The cable, dated Nov 09, 2009 refers to a meeting between United States’ Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Anand Sharma, the Cabinet Minister for Commerce and Industry of the Government of India, to reactive the trade policy forum between the two countries. The

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IP Scholarship in Education

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Eleven years ago, DePaul University College of Law, Chicago allowed a small group of IP scholars to get together and discuss their works in progress. This became an annual IP Scholars Conference (IPSC) with the number of participants increasing exponentially, and co-sponsored by the IP centers at Berkeley Law School, Cardozo School of Law and the Stanford Law School. The latest edition was held on August 11-12 in Chicago. The conference had 137 presenters including many of the top IP scholars in

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MPP faces licensing issues

/ By / Patent

Image from Woody1778a We had earlier mentioned that the Medicines Patent Pool had gotten into an agreement with it’s first pharmaceutical company. However, it appears that there are certain problems with the licensing agreement, the interpretation and understanding of which is under dispute by two traditional heavyweights in this field. I-Mak released a briefing paper on the Implications of the MPP and Gilead licenses on Access to Treatment which addressed certain concerns that they had with the license; and Knowledge Ecology

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Fighting Piracy with Oppression?

/ By / Copyright

Screenshot taken from TorrentFreak A frantic call from a friend last night informed me of a rather strange message on their screen. “This site has been blocked as per instructions from Department of Telecom (DoT)”. The site my friend was trying to access was Megaupload.com – an online storage site. A quick google inquiry brought up similar concerns being voiced by other internet users on internet forums. I, myself, however, was able to access the site with no problems. From

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Gilead dips its toes into Patent Pool

/ By / Innovation, Patent

Earlier this year, we had carried a post on UNITAID’s Medicines Patent Pool being in talks with several key pharmaceutical companies. In a press release by the Medicines Patent Pool today, they announced an agreement with Gilead Sciences, which makes them the first pharmaceutical company to join the MPP. Gilead also announced that they had already established license agreements with 4 India based drug manufacturers – Hetero Drugs Ltd., Matrix Laboratories Ltd., Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. and Strides Arcolab Ltd Patent Pools

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