Post Tagged with: "IP"

U.S. Intellectual Property Demands for TPP Leak: Everything it Wanted in ACTA But Didn’t Get

With the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiation concluded, attention is now turning to the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement. The TPP currently includes the US, Australia, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, Peru, Malaysia and Vietnam. Canada has not joined the negotiation, but there have been periodic rumours that wants in (it was […]

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March 11, 2011 20 comments News

Canadian Funded Study Provides New Insights Into Global Piracy Claims

The Social Science Research Council has released its much-anticipated study on media piracy in emerging economies. The 440 page report, which received funding from Canada’s International Development Research Centre, provides an exceptionally detailed and insightful examination of global piracy claims with specific analysis of several middle income economies including South Africa, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia, and India. The report also features a detailed discussion of industry-sponsored piracy research, the shortcomings of the enforcement agenda, the lack of evidence that “organized crime” is heavily involved in piracy, and the ongoing failure of “education” programs.

The entire report is a must-read but key findings include:

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March 8, 2011 8 comments News

Australia Government Report Warns Against Including IP In Trade Agreements

The Australian Government’s Productivity Commission, which is the government’s independent research and advisory body on a range of economic, social and environmental issues affecting the welfare of Australians, has released a new report on the impact of bilateral and regional trade agreements.  The report, which contains some key lessons for Canada given our current trade negotiations activities with Europe, India, and South American countries, warns against the inclusion of intellectual property within these trade agreements.  The report concludes:

The Commission considers that Australia should not generally seek to include IP provisions in further BRTAs, and that any IP provisions that are proposed for a particular agreement should only be included after an economic assessment of the impacts, including on consumers, in Australia and partner countries. To safeguard against the prospect that acceptance of ‘negative sum game’ proposals, the assessment would need to find that implementing the provisions would likely generate overall net benefits for members of the agreement.

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December 14, 2010 7 comments News

Intellectual Property Appears to Figure Prominently In Wikileaks Cablegate

Intellectual property policy has long been closely linked to U.S. trade policy, so it should come as little surprise to find that it appears to figure prominently in the cables obtained by Wikileaks.  Although only a couple hundreds have been posted thus far, the Guardian has supplied a full list […]

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November 29, 2010 44 comments News

Commercialization of IP In Canadian Universities: Barely Better Than Break Even

Last week, Statistics Canada released its latest report on the commercialization of intellectual property in Canadian universities.  Canada spends billions of public dollars on research funding each year and the government has been increasingly focused on how best to commercialize the results.  While there are several possible approaches to doing this, the government and some universities have been focused on building patent and IP portfolios as part of a conventional commercialization strategy.  The alternative could be an open access approach – encourage (or require) much of the intellectual property to be made broadly available under open licences so that multiple organizations could add value and find ways to commercialize.  The universities might generate less income but would better justify the public investment in research by providing the engine for larger economic benefits.

Which approach is better?  The full commercialization approach has been tried in the U.S. with legislation known as Bayh-Dole and studies (here and here) have found that patents to universities have increased, but the increase has been accompanied by harm to the public domain of science and relatively small gains in income.

The Canadian Science and Technology Strategy similarly places its faith in commercialization through IP portfolios and licencing, yet the Statscan data suggests that this has also been ineffective. 

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August 31, 2010 18 comments News