Author name: Swaraj Paul Barooah

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Public Health players combine forces

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January 30th marked an unprecedented level of cooperation between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, several top pharmaceutical companies, governments and other big players in the public health field towards combating and attempting to eliminate 10 neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) by the end of the decade. These NTDs affect about 1.4 billion people a year and primarily those in developing countries and LDCs.  “Uniting to Combat Neglected Tropical Diseases“, which was held in London yesterday, marked several sizable contributions and

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Contrasting international opinion on file-sharing!

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Image from here Big Bully is watching your Government It’s no surprise to anyone that countries with means do what they can do ‘negotiate’ with other countries to have them see their way. While the US places not so subtle pressure on several countries through their annual Special 301 Reports, a recent wikileaks cable between US and Spain has shown that the US may have stepped over  the ‘pressure’ line and moved into the ‘threatening’ zone. Part of the message

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CJEU rules against in-transit seizures by Custom officials

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image from here Readers may recall the in-transit seizures which caused a furor about a couple of years ago. A brief recap: Several consignments of generic medicines had been detained while they were in transit from India to other developing / least developed countries by the EU customs under EC Regulation 1383/2003. The 1383 regulation amended border protection mechanisms, so that member states could take certain customs action against goods suspected of infringing intellectual property rights, and also laid down the measures

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"Creation of the WTO" videos

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A very interesting set of video interviews with many of the people involved in and during the birth of the WTO have been compiled and put on a youtube channel available here. Prof Gabrielle Marceau initiated this project. As described on the channel, “This project began as a tribute to Ambassador Paul Trân Van Thinh on the occasion of his 80th birthday. We set out to retrace, through interviews with friends and colleagues, Paul Trân’s exceptional journey. Paul Trân, who

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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

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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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