Fighting Against Biopiracy: Does the Obligation to Disclose in Patent Applications Truly Help?

In the global fight against biopiracy, one of the key issues is to prevent the grant and exploitation of patents on traditional knowledge and genetic resources by requiring that patent applicants for inventions involving traditional knowledge and genetic resources disclose the source of those resources and provide evidence that the prior informed consent of the local owners of such resources has been obtained and that benefit-sharing agreements have been entered into with those owners. This Article argues that a legal discussion of biopiracy should analyze the obligation to disclose the use of traditional knowledge and genetic resources in an invention beyond the sanctions that are attached in case of violation of such obligations as previously discussed at the international level. These issues should be addressed in light of the key objectives to be achieved: to ensure the effective sharing of benefits resulting from the use of such resources with the local communities that own them, and to implement appropriate mechanisms for this purpose. In the course of the analysis, this Article adopts an interdisciplinary approach by referring to rules governing the legal protection of tangible and intangible cultural property in order to explore the extent to which they could be used as models for a regime of protection against the misappropriation of traditional knowledge and genetic resources. This approach is inspired by the similarity between biopiracy and the misappropriation of cultural property goods, which constitutes a kind of cultural piracy. This Article concludes that balanced, flexible, and interdisciplinary solutions are required in order to ensure that the interests of local communities are protected without unduly threatening the interests of their commercial partners

Euro-Korean Perspectives on the Use of Arbitration and ADR Mechanisms for Solving Intellectual Property Disputes

The complexities of international intellectual property litigation (including jurisdictional issues, choice of law, lis pendens, and the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments) contribute to explain why arbitration and alternative dispute resolution systems constitute an attractive method for solving intellectual property disputes. At a time when the European Union has created a new patent court system (as a result of the recent adoption of the European Patent with Unitary Effect and of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court signed in February 2013) which will include the setting up of a new patent arbitration and mediation center, it is critical that this new institution shall take into account the best practices and the experience developed in these fields in other parts of the world, particularly in Korea which has gained considerable experience on these issues. On this basis, the goal of this article is to present the recent developments relating to the use of arbitration and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms for solving intellectual property disputes in Korea and in Europe from a comparative perspectiv

The Effect of FRAND Commitments on Patent Remedies

This chapter addresses a special category of cases in which an asserted patent is, or has been declared to be, essential to the implementation of a collaboratively-developed voluntary consensus standard, and the holder of that patent has agreed to license it to implementers of the standard on terms that are fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND). In this chapter, we explore how the existence of such a FRAND commitment may affect a patent holder’s entitlement to monetary damages and injunctive relief. In addition to issues of patent law, remedies law and contract law, we consider the effect of competition law on this issue

Droit de l'art et des biens culturels et droit d'auteur : quel(s) lien(s) ?

Comme le confirme le thème du Congrès de l'ATRIP tenu en juillet 2005 « entre l'art et l'argent » (Bridging aesthetics and economics), les éléments esthétiques et commerciaux peuvent coexister étroitement en droit de la propriété intellectuelle. Ceci se confirme tout particulièrement pour le droit d'auteur dont les prérogatives couvrent tant les droits patrimoniaux (soit l'argent) que le droit moral (soit l'art) de l'auteur. Or, cette connexité entre art et argent qui relève de l'essence du droit d'auteur est également immanente aux objets d'art et aux biens culturels. Ceux-ci représentent en effet d'une part l'expression de la créativité artistique humaine et ont ainsi une valeur artistique et culturelle (qui est hors commerce). Ils font d'autre part l'objet d'un marché commercial extrêmement florissant. Cette tension entre l'art et l'argent existe donc non seulement pour les oeuvres protégées par le droit d'auteur, mais s'applique plus généralement à tous les biens artistiques et culturels