Erica Penfold, South African Institute of International Affairs
The generic drug industry has become essential to developing countries that need access to cheaper drugs to treat their heavy burdens of communicable diseases.
Founded in 1790, the Patent Office aimed to put innovation and entrepreneurship within reach of every citizen. Now, 10 million patents later, critics say an out-of-touch system is doing the opposite.
When academics come up with a viable innovation, they need to figure out the best way to protect their intellectual property if they’re going to bring it to market. Patents aren’t always the answer.
Nobody loves patent trolls. But new legislation in Congress aimed at the trolls isn’t necessary, since the effects of recent patent reforms are only starting to be felt.
Seven rounds of negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership have already taken place with virtually no public debate. The next round of negotiations begins today in Kyoto, Japan.
In 1998, if Congress hadn’t extended copyrights by 20 years, George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind would all be in the public domain…
It’s twice as common as type 1 diabetes. It kills more Australians than HIV. One in every 100 of us lives with hepatitis C, but the disease receives little attention. Worldwide, around 150 million people…
Ten years on from the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, Australia is entering another round of negotiations towards the new and controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership. In this Free Trade Scorecard series…
With the much-anticipated arrival next month of electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla’s Model S to Australian shores, it’s a good time to revisit Tesla’s pledge to freely share patents. Elon Musk, co-founder…
Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane let his discretion slip this week in a speech to the Queensland Media Club when foreshadowing an upcoming report on research funding and competition. Distancing himself…
Forcing research and innovation to fit corporate needs exclusively sounds like a pretty blunt way to govern how public funds are awarded and used in universities. Granted, in a political environment touting…
Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane has floated the idea that government grants be linked to the number of patents a university registers, rather than the papers it gets published. The suggestion comes at…
Google, Canon and other information technology corporations last week announced they’re banding together in an attempt to fix an allegedly broken patent system and squash the wave of patent trolls and…