Enabling Innovation Policies
Innovation ecosystems are complex. They involve many actors, which must be motivated to invest in risky new ventures with no guarantee of success. They rest on a foundation of enabling policies in areas including intellectual property, trade, investment, rule of law, and education. A productive innovation ecosystem provides legal certainty and predictability for innovators. IP protection and enforcement frameworks are important in this regard. Patent rules should be business-model neutral and aimed at supporting innovation over the long-term. Trade secret protection, which can help innovators to manage valuable, confidential information, is particularly relevant for SMEs and individual inventors. Rules that enable public and private sector entities to share knowledge and jointly commercialize R&D can ensure that breakthroughs don’t sit on the shelf. Through Innovation Council, members weigh in on the range of policies that can advance innovation across sectors and regions.
Analysis of patent “evergreening”
In this article, Professor Erika Leitzen argues that critics of so-called “evergreening” of healthcare patents have an ulterior motive: to deny drug innovators the right to enjoy the exclusivity, and the resulting pricing advantages, their patents afford them. She says understanding this requires unpacking the regulatory landscape and market more carefully, and paying closer attention to word choice.
EU Commission adopts action plan on intellectual property
In late November 2020, the EU Commission published a new Action Plan on Intellectual Property to help companies, especially small and medium-sized companies (SMEs), to make the most of their inventions and creations and ensure they can benefit our economy and society.
Intellectual property (IP) is a key driver for economic growth as it helps companies to valorize their intangible assets. The Action Plan aims at enabling the European creative and innovative industry to remain a global leader and at speeding up Europe’s green and digital transitions. In particular, the Action Plan sets out key steps to improve the protection of IP; to boost the uptake of IP by SMEs; to facilitate the sharing of IP to increase the technological uptake in the industry; to fight counterfeiting and improve the enforcement of IP rights; and to promote a global level playing field.
USG Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property
The U.S. Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property provides an overview of the Trump Administration’s intellectual property enforcement strategy and policy efforts.
Singaporean business associations welcome RCEP
Two Singaporean business associations, the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises and the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, have welcomed the signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and said they will help local small and medium enterprises tap into the opportunities provided by the agreement.
The RCEP was signed by the ten ASEAN states (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam), and five of their FTA partners—Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea. The 15 member countries account for 30% of the world’s population and 30% of global GDP, making it the world’s largest trade bloc.
EUIPO and INSME collaboration agreement to bring IP to SMEs
The SME ecosystem needs more partnerships to encourage a favorable environment where SMEs can develop and reach their full potential in business. A new collaboration agreement between EUIPO and the International Network for Small and Medium Enterprises aims to do just that. This collaboration agreement enables both organizations to work in pursuit of a common goal, to foster growth and empower SMEs.
Charting leadership in the 5G race
In this article, Matthew Noble, Jane Mutimear and Richard Vary examine the difficulties in charting the leadership of companies in the 5G Standard Essential Patent (“SEP”) industry, and demonstrate how different assumptions can drastically affect the results. Our article investigates: the difficulties in making such an assessment; how variable the results are to the underlying assumptions; and, the importance of being transparent when publishing patent portfolio analytics, especially with regard to 5G SEPs.
WIPO Re:Search
By catalyzing a broad range of innovative collaborations, WIPO Re:Search supports early-stage research and development (R&D) in the fight against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), malaria, and tuberculosis. Harnessing the power of public-private partnerships, it helps make IP available to scientists who need it. Moreover, through WIPO Re:Search, scientists from a range of countries have had the chance to participate in scientific exchanges and training abroad. This was an unanticipated benefit from the initiative. Innovation Council member Novartis was a founding member of WIPO Re:Search.
Analysis of patent prosecution in China
This paper by Gaetan de Rassenfosse looks for traces of discrimination against foreigners in the patent prosecution process, building on earlier work. It focuses on the case of China, looking in particular at patent applications declared as essential to a technological standard, so called standard-essential patents (SEPs). It finds there is discrimination in the treatment of such patent applications, which are less likely to be granted and/or to take longer to grant.