The Open COVID Pledge: What Is It and Is It Right for You?; The National Law Review, April 14, 2020

Theresa Rakocy, The National Law Review; The Open COVID Pledge: What Is It and Is It Right for You?

"Enter one possible solution: The Open COVID Pledge. A group of scientists, lawyers, and entrepreneurs developed the Open COVID Pledge to encourage businesses and research facilities to make their intellectual property available for use in the fight against COVID-19. The idea behind the Open COVID Pledge is to allow open sharing of intellectual property and technology to end the pandemic without the need for timely and costly licenses or royalty agreements. The initiative comes at a time when researchers and companies alike are surging ahead with ways to combat and end COVID-19. In its Press Release, the individuals behind the Open COVID Pledge explain that the license is needed because “enabling individuals and organizations across the world to work on solutions together, without impediments, is the quickest way to end this pandemic.”...

As COVID-19 continues to spread worldwide, with the number of new cases each day still increasing in most countries, research and the development of new technologies to combat and eradicate COVID-19 has blossomed. As discussed in an earlier post, countries and companies are looking for ways to contribute, with many now making available and expanding access to their intellectual property. The balance between access and protection of intellectual property, however, is delicate."

Putting China in charge of the world’s intellectual property is a bad idea; The Washington Post, Janaury 30, 2020

Josh Rogin , The Washington Post; Putting China in charge of the world’s intellectual property is a bad idea

"Beijing is lobbying hard to take over leadership of the international organization that oversees intellectual property, which could result in dire consequences for the future of technology and economic competition. But the U.S.-led effort to prevent this from happening faces a steep uphill climb.

In March, 83 countries will vote to elect the next director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a U.N.-created body founded in 1967 “to promote the protection of intellectual property throughout the world.” The Chinese candidate, Wang Binying, currently serves as one of its four deputy director-generals and is widely seen as the front-runner.

On its face, allowing China to assume leadership of the WIPO poses a clear risk to the integrity of the institution, given that the U.S. government has singled out China as the leading source of intellectual property theft in the world."

Why Patents and Copyrights Matter; Ayn Rand Institute, Janaury 15, 2020

[47 min. Video] Elan Journo, Ayn Rand Institute; Why Patents and Copyrights Matter

"Why do patents and copyrights matter? What do they protect? What to make of the objections against them? For instance: that no one is really hurt by violations of copyrights or patents; or that these rights are obstacles to progress and innovation; or that they’re an unfair, government-granted privilege or favor?   

To explore these issues, I talked to Professor Adam Mossoff, who teaches law at George Mason University. Mossoff is an expert on intellectual property law and policy, who has published extensively in academic journals and popular outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Politico, among many others. He has testified several times before the Senate and the House of Representatives."

Wary of Chinese Espionage, Houston Cancer Center Chose to Fire 3 Scientists; The New York Times, April 22, 2019

Mihir Zaveri, The New York Times; Wary of Chinese Espionage, Houston Cancer Center Chose to Fire 3 Scientists

"“A small but significant number of individuals are working with government sponsorship to exfiltrate intellectual property that has been created with the support of U.S. taxpayers, private donors and industry collaborators,” Dr. Peter Pisters, the center’s president, said in a statement on Sunday.

“At risk is America’s internationally acclaimed system of funding biomedical research, which is based on the principles of trust, integrity and merit.”

The N.I.H. had also flagged two other researchers at MD Anderson. One investigation is proceeding, the center said, and the evidence did not warrant firing the other researcher.

The news of the firings was first reported by The Houston Chronicle and Science magazine.

The investigations began after Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, sent a letter in August to more than 10,000 institutions the agency funds, warning of “threats to the integrity of U.S. biomedical research.”"

Pride and profit: Why Mayan weavers fight for intellectual property rights; The Christian Science Monitor, March 27, 2019

Whitney Eulich, The Christian Science Monitor;

Pride and profit: Why Mayan weavers fight for intellectual property rights

Why We Wrote This

Who owns culture, if anyone? It’s a complicated question that can seem almost theoretical. But its real-life consequences are keenly felt by many traditional artisans.

"Dr. Little fears that looking at textile design through the lens of fashion essentially “freezes it in time as a kind of folk art or folk material and that doesn’t allow it to actually live.”

“I think of [weaving] like a language,” he adds. Among indigenous communities, “it’s more vibrant when everyone is using it, fooling around with it, taking from others, and making new combinations. Vibrancy in language indicates strength, and in textiles it’s the same way.”"

Navy Official: Concerns About Intellectual Property Rights Becoming More 'Acute'; National Defense, NDIA's Business & Technology Magazine, November 29, 2018

Connie Lee, National Defense, NDIA's Business & Technology Magazine;

Navy Official: Concerns About Intellectual Property Rights Becoming More 'Acute'

"Capt. Samuel Pennington, major program manager for surface training systems, said the fear of losing data rights can sometimes make companies reluctant to work with the government.
“We get feedback sometimes where they’re not willing to bid on a contract where we have full data rights,” he said. “Industry [is] not going to do that because they have their secret sauce and they don’t want to release it.”
Pennington said having IP rights would allow the Defense Department to more easily modernize and sustain equipment.
“Our initiative is to get as much data rights, or buy a new product that has open architecture to the point where [the] data rights that we do have are sufficient, where we can recompete that down the road,” he said. This would prevent the Navy from relying on the original manufacturer for future work on the system, he noted.
The issue is also being discussed on Capitol Hill, Merritt added. The fiscal year 2018 National Defense Authorization Act requires the Pentagon to develop policy on the acquisition or licensing of intellectual property. Additionally, the NDAA requires the department to negotiate a price for technical data rights of major weapon systems."

Counterfeits in the Digital Marketplace; Lexology, November 7, 2018

Goulston & Storrs PC - Andrew J. Ferren and Jessica Carballo, 

Lexology; Counterfeits in the Digital Marketplace

[Kip Currier: Timely article, on this Cyber Monday, and in light of my IP course's lecture last week on IP Piracy and the Dark Web. 

Anybody else noticing how so many goods fall apart or break really quickly these days?! Glazed gardening pots that crack and disintegrate in one season. Designer metal shower hooks that break off in one year. Ear and nose trimmers that conk out after one use. Clothes that fray--sometimes even after just one wash cycle in cold water. And on and on and on...

As this article makes clear, too, it's annoying when some goods aren't what they claim to be and have a built-in obsolescence of about zero. It's downright dangerous when they explode or catch fire, and when they contain arsenic, lead, and other harmful substances that kids and adults are breathing in and coming into contact with. And let's not forget impacts of counterfeit items on animals, whether farm ones or animal companions, in the form of contaminated feed.

The Trump administration and some federal agencies have made some good steps in the past couple of years in better enforcing IP rights and cracking down on counterfeit goods. The U.S. Congress also needs to take more aggressive action, with civil and criminal consequences, to rein in and hold bad actors and entities accountable and ensure public safety and health are paramount. "Caveat emptor" should not and must not exculpate disreputable sellers from facing the ramifications of their amoral actions.]

"Counterfeiting has moved beyond high-priced luxury goods to low-cost everyday items. Many of these fake products pose real dangers: face masks with arsenic; phone adapters that can electrocute you; computer chargers that fry your hardware; batteries that blow up. These counterfeits infiltrate online marketplaces, where they co-mingle with authentic products in warehouses and ship to unsuspecting consumers. With millions of goods leaving fulfillment centers every day, brand owners and consumers must wrestle with a billion dollar problem: how do you police the largest marketplace in the world?

In January of this year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office filed a report detailing the results of a federal investigation in which 47 products were purchased from five online retailers, including Amazon and Walmart.com. All of the products were advertised as new, shipped from the United States, and sold by third-party sellers with customer ratings above 90%. Nearly half were counterfeit.

How does this happen? The five websites investigated have sizable “marketplaces,” virtual storefronts that let people other than the hosting company sell merchandise. For perspective, more than half of the goods sold on Amazon are from these third-party sellers. Anyone with an ID and a credit card can open a virtual storefront; few identifying details are required to set one up, and these details are regularly falsified. Since 2014, manufacturers from China (the world’s largest maker of counterfeit goods) have been able to sell directly to consumers in the Amazon Marketplace. In fulfillment centers, where products are picked up for packaging and shipment, goods from third-party sellers and goods direct from brand owners co-mingle. The resulting product pool is a mix of authentic and counterfeit goods, all sold as the same product and often for the same price."
 

What Happens When Universities Become ‘Party Strongholds’; The New York Times, October 18, 2018

Zhang Lun, The New York Times; What Happens When Universities Become ‘Party Strongholds’

 [Kip Currier: No matter what one's political leanings and ideology, any human being who values bedrock democratic ideals like free expression and academic freedom should be deeply concerned by the kinds of practices detailed in this New York Times article about China's Orwellian efforts to instill "party strongholds" in higher education classrooms.]

"As China’s economic woes threaten to undermine President Xi Jinping’s authority, the government has intensified its political control on campuses. In Mr. Xi’s words, universities should become “party strongholds.”...

When Western leaders confront China over its intellectual property rights violations during trade talks, it is important to pressure Chinese leaders to make academic freedom a mandatory condition for trade. A little outside pressure is the only hope for change."

When Scientists Develop Products From Personal Medical Data, Who Gets To Profit?; NPR, May 31, 2018

Richard Harris, NPR; When Scientists Develop Products From Personal Medical Data, Who Gets To Profit?

"If you go to the hospital for medical treatment and scientists there decide to use your medical information to create a commercial product, are you owed anything as part of the bargain?

That's one of the questions that is emerging as researchers and product developers eagerly delve into digital data such as CT scans and electronic medical records, making artificial-intelligence products that are helping doctors to manage information and even to help them diagnose disease.

This issue cropped up in 2016, when Google DeepMind decided to test an app that measures kidney health by gathering 1.6 million records from patients at the Royal Free Hospital in London. The British authorities found this broke patient privacy laws in the United Kingdom. (Update on June 1 at 9:30 a.m. ET: DeepMind says it was able to deploy its app despite the violation.)

But the rules are different in the United States."

Drug Company ‘Shenanigans’ to Block Generics Come Under Federal Scrutiny; The New York Times, April 14, 2018

Robert Pear, The New York Times; Drug Company ‘Shenanigans’ to Block Generics Come Under Federal Scrutiny

"At a time when researchers are using sophisticated science to develop new treatments and cures, the fight over physical samples — a few thousand pills — sounds mundane. But it has huge implications for consumers’ access to affordable medicines.

The F.D.A. says it has received more than 150 inquiries from generic drug companies unable to obtain the samples needed to show that a generic product works the same as a brand-name medicine. Some of the disputes over samples involve drugs that are costly to patients and to the Medicare program and that have experienced sharp price increases in recent years.

“Without generic competition, there is no pressure to drive down the costs of these medications,” the food and drug agency said. Under current law, it said, it cannot compel a brand-name drug manufacturer to sell samples to a generic company."

Patenting the Future of Medicine: The Intersection of Patent Law and Artificial Intelligence in Medicine; Lexology, February 14, 2018

Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner LLP - Susan Y. Tull, Lexology; Patenting the Future of Medicine: The Intersection of Patent Law and Artificial Intelligence in Medicine

"Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the world of medicine, and the intellectual property directed to these inventions must keep pace. AI computers are diagnosing medical conditions and disorders at a rate equal to or better than their human peers, all while developing their own software code and algorithms to do so. These recent advances raise issues of patentability, inventorship, and ownership as machine-based learning evolves."

Should an artificial intelligence be allowed to get a patent?; Robohub, March 9, 2017

Ronald Yu, Robohub; 

Should an artificial intelligence be allowed to get a patent?

"Returning to the original question about patent rights for an A.I., perhaps the question we should ask is not whether an A.I. should be able to get a patent, but whether an A.I., given current technology, can create a patentable invention in the first place and if the answer to that question is ‘no’, then the question of granting patent rights to an A.I. is moot."

U.S. Withdrawal from TPP Impact on Intellectual Property; Inside Counsel, March 3, 2017

Amanda Ciccatelli, Inside Counsel; 

U.S. Withdrawal from TPP Impact on Intellectual Property

"Further, the U.S. withdrawal from the TPP may have major global implications for IP rights. As the TPP was being negotiated, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) was slowly progressing in the background. The RCEP is a Chinese- and Indian-led alternative to TPP that includes all seven of the Asian and Oceanic states in TPP, plus South Korea, Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Cambodia. 

“But the RCEP is almost certain to provide less protection for IP rights – especially pharmaceutical patent rights – than the TPP would have,” Rich said. “India and China are traditionally hostile to strong pharmaceutical patent protections of the type found under U.S. law, calling such patent protections ‘evergreening.’ “So, the rejection of the TPP is likely to allow an alternative, less protective paradigm for international IP rights to arise in its place.”"

Should Couples Get Prenups for Their Ideas?; New York Times, 12/21/16

Room for Debate, New York Times; Should Couples Get Prenups for Their Ideas? :

"The number of 18- to 35-year-olds seeking prenups is on the rise nationwide, but many millennials are more interested in protecting intellectual property — such as films, songs, software and even apps that haven’t been built yet — than cash.

What does this shift mean for marriage and divorce?"