Access to IPRs

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.

On October 8, 2020, 4iP Council held a webinar to explore the relevance of IP for research for both public and private spheres. The speakers, Dr. Peter Oksen, Senior Program Officer of WIPO GREEN, and Prof. Koenraad Debackere, Executive Director of KU Leuven Research and Development, discussed the role of IP in technology transfer, the related legal context and its variations across Europe.

The U.S. Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property provides an overview of the Trump Administration’s intellectual property enforcement strategy and policy efforts.

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.

It has been announced today that the covid-19 vaccine being developed by Pfizer and BioNTech has been found to be 90% effective in preventing the disease, without presenting any safety concerns in the first interim analysis from its Phase 3 clinical study. This puts it at the head of the pack of candidate vaccines in the race to achieve regulatory approval. But there are major IP obstacles for any organisation seeking to produce a copycat version; while Pfizer/BioNTech themselves are embroiled in a patent dispute over the vaccine. Read more.

The Inventor Assistance Program (IAP) – a WIPO initiative in cooperation with the World Economic Forum – is the first global program to match developing country inventors and small businesses with limited financial means with patent attorneys. These experts provide pro bono legal assistance to help inventors secure patent protection. Participating countries are Colombia, Ecuador, Morocco, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa. Innovation Council members Novartis and Qualcomm are on the advisory board of the IAP, and were instrumental in its establishment.

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.

This report updates the USPTO’s 2019 report on U.S. women inventor-patentees, “Progress and Potential,” using three years of new data, covering 2017 through 2019. It provides new information on women’s participation in the U.S. patent system, finding, among other things, that women make up an increasing share of all new entrants to the patent system, rising from about 5% of new inventor-patentees in 1980 to 17.3% by 2019. Innovation Council supports efforts to collect data on participation by minorities in IP systems. Data collection is the first step towards policymaking to support better access for minorities, including but not only women, to IP tools they can use to grow their businesses.