Rethinking the role of the patent office from the perspective of responsive regulation

Patent offices, especially the world�s largest patent offices, contribute to uncertainty. In 2011 almost 1 million patents were granted around the world, bringing the total number of patents in force to an estimated 7.88 million. The hundreds of thousands of patents that are issued by patent offices every year produce a state of flux in the obligations of third parties in the marketplace. Each new patent generates exclusivity rights and corresponding obligations. Trade in these patents through assignment and licensing intensifies the flux. This flux generates uncertainty. The uncertainty has two basic sources. A company making product X cannot be sure that it has found all the patents relevant to product X in all the jurisdictions in which it is operating (completeness uncertainty) and, where it has found relevant patents, there are likely to be, at least for some patents, interpretive uncertainties � what does the patent cover and what does it not? Would the patent be upheld by a court? It is not only granted patents that are a source of uncertainty. Published patent applications also contribute (more than 2 million applications were filed worldwide in 2011)

The US, China and the G-77 in the era ofresponsive patentability

The paper argues that China is building its capacity to grant, use and enforce patents. The same is true of Brazil and India. China has the greatest potential of scale of any developing country to use the patent system as a wealth-maximizing tool. The paper considers three questions. Can China make the patent system work for it? If so, how will the US respond? What should the weaker members of the G-77 do in light of the fact that the leaders of the G-77 are no longer interested in dealing with the structural disadvantages that the patent system perpetuates

Regulating patent offices: countering pharmaceutical hegemony

The grant of a patent is not a reward. Rather it is an opportunity for the patent owner to pursue profits using the patent monopoly to exclude competition. Profit-maximising patent owners focus their monopoly powers on markets in which profits are the greatest. In the case of patents over medical products this leads to well known problems of access to medicines for poor people. The costs and abuses of the patent system in the pharmaceutical sector have been persistent and known for a long time, as John Braithwaite’s magisterial 1984 study, Corporate Crime in the Pharmaceutical Industry vividly illustrates. The failure to do anything substantial about these costs and abuses is a function of the power of pharmaceutical transnational corporations (TNCs) and US and EU hegemony over standard-setting in the international patent framework

Regulatory theory: foundations and applications

- Divulgação dos SUMÁRIOS das obras recentemente incorporadas ao acervo da Biblioteca Ministro Oscar Saraiva do STJ. Em respeito à Lei de Direitos Autorais, não disponibilizamos a obra na íntegra.- Localização na estante: 34 R344

Science in the garden of midnight : how contract and intellectual property build the military-industrial complex

Intellectual property and contract have been integral to the construction of an enframing paradigm of militarized science for the institution of science. The paper traces how the Manhattan project provided the U.S. with its first large-scale experience of using contracts and intellectual property to restrict the diffusion of sensitive military technology. In the following decades private law, namely contract and intellectual property, were used to bind the military, firms and universities into a system. Science, including university science finds itself in an iron military cage. The final section asks whether private law tools can help science break out of this cage

Pride and Profit: Geographical Indications as Regional Development Tools in Australia

Geographical Indications (GIs) are intellectual property rights in placenames that evoke the typical qualities of agricultural products and foodstuffs that originate in particular districts. Presently, the EU is the dominant holder of protected GIs and the EU asserts that they are used extensively and effectively in EU countries as a rural and regional development tool. To date, Australia's response to GIs has largely been driven by perceptions of their impact upon trade gains and losses. Currently, Australia only has legal protection for wine-related GI's because of an agreement with the EU. Given an increased focus on GIs internationally, particularly in China and India, we raise the question of whether Australia should more deeply consider a special regime for the legal protection of GIs in relation to agricultural products and foodstuffs more generally, something that has not been investigated to date because of Australia's negative attitude towards GI protection in international trade negotiations. This paper sets out the challenges and opportunities of considering GI development against the backdrop of Australia's regional, rural and remote diversit

Assessing the impact of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement on Australian and global medicines policy

On 1 January 2005, a controversial trade agreement entered into force between Australia and the United States. Though heralded by the parties as facilitating the removal of barriers to free trade (in ways not achievable in multilateral fora), it also contained many trade-restricting intellectual property provisions and others uniquely related to altering pharmaceutical regulation and public health policy in Australia. The latter appear to have particularly focused on the world-respected process of federal government reimbursement after expert cost-effectiveness evaluation, popularly known as the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme ('PBS'). It remains uncertain what sort of impacts – if any – the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement ('AUSFTA') will have on PBS processes such as reference pricing and their important role in facilitating equitable and affordable access to essential medicines. This is now the field of inquiry for a major three year Australian Research Council ('ARC')-funded study bringing together a team of senior researchers in regulatory theory from the Australian National University and pharmacoeconomics from the University of Newcastle. The project proposes to monitor, assess and analyse the real and potential impacts of the AUSFTA in this area, providing Australian policy-makers with continuing expertise and options. To the extent that the AUSFTA medicines provisions may represent an important precedent in a global strategy by industry on cost-effectiveness evaluation of pharmaceuticals, the study will also be of great interest to policy makers in other jurisdictions