Intellectual property in a post-pandemic future part I - The world has become more IP-intensive; Lexology, December 31, 2021

Bird & Bird LLP, Lexology; Intellectual property in a post-pandemic future part I - The world has become more IP-intensive

"The coronavirus pandemic surprised the world a couple of years ago and forced people to adapt to exceptional circumstances. At the start of this series of articles, the return to the “new normal” has already been canceled once due to the omicron variant, and the old saying about the certainty of change feels very concrete.

A great deal has also happened in the field of intellectual property assets during the pandemic. I will discuss these, perhaps to some degree surprising, changes in the following series of articles, the first part of which concerns IP protection activity and its effects during the coronavirus era. In the second part, I will proceed to address the IP cultures of businesses which are nowadays seen as an increasingly significant part of the IP strategies of corporations. The third and final section of the series is dedicated to IP issues regarding sustainable development. All the themes mentioned show that even in the field of IP rights, only change is permanent and succeeding in a changing IP field requires companies to adapt a considerably more active and conscious frame of mind."

Top Intellectual Property Issues to Watch in 2022; Bloomberg Law, December 3, 2021

Dorothy R. Auth, Howard Wizenfeld, David (Dash) Cole , Bloomberg Law; Top Intellectual Property Issues to Watch in 2022

"Evolving U.S. intellectual property law continues to impact many industries, including the technology and pharmaceutical sectors, with 2022 promising to be no different.

The U.S. Supreme Court will have a significant role to play in the coming year. On the patent front, it will decide whether to review the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s decision in American Axle, a case which could potentially expand patent- ineligible subject matter to include certain conventional methods of using mechanical devices

A second case, now seeking Supreme Court review, Amgen v. Sanofi could have implications in the biotech and pharma space with regard to the ability to protect chemical genuses.

Copyright law is also evolving, with U.S. appellate courts trying to apply the Supreme Court’s Google v. Oracle decision addressing fair use in more traditional copyright settings."

WIPO and the US Copyright Office Examine Artificial Intelligence and, to Lesser Extent, Intellectual Property; Info Justice, February 11, 2020

Sean Flynn and Andres Izquierdo, Info Justice; WIPO and the US Copyright Office Examine Artificial Intelligence and, to Lesser Extent, Intellectual Property

"On February 5, 2020, the U.S. Copyright Office and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) co-sponsored a well-attended event on Copyright in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The full-day event took an in-depth look at the development and operation of artificial intelligence (“AI”). It paid substantially less attention to the full range of intellectual property issues raised by this new field. 

The single-day event featured visual artists, audiovisual producers, music composers and executives, software developers, guilds of diverse artistic interests, people developing artificial intelligence, and (mostly perhaps) copyright lawyers." 

The spread of 3D models creates intellectual-property problems; The Economist, July 20, 2017

The Economist; The spread of 3D models creates intellectual-property problems

"GROOT, a character from Disney’s film “Guardians of the Galaxy”, is usually mass-produced by the entertainment company as a small, collectable figurine and sold by retailers such as Toys “R” Us. But just before the release of the second film in the franchise earlier this year, Byambasuren Erdenejargal, a Mongolian enthusiast, noticed that people in a 3D-printing group on Facebook were searching for a computer model of Groot. So Mr Erdenejargal decided to create one. He spent four days perfecting the design and its printability before uploading his creation to Thingiverse, an online 3D-printing community based in New York. His digital model of the arboreal creature has since been downloaded (and probably printed in physical form) over 75,000 times."

Talks for Pacific Trade Deal Stumble; New York Times, 7/31/15

Jonathan Weisman, New York Times; Talks for Pacific Trade Deal Stumble:

"Trade negotiators from the United States and 11 other Pacific nations failed to reach final agreement on Friday, with difficult talks on the largest regional trade agreement ever deadlocking over protections for drug companies and access to agriculture markets on both sides of the Pacific...

In the end, a deal filled with 21st-century policies on Internet access, advanced pharmaceuticals and trade in clean energy foundered on issues that have bedeviled international trade for decades: access to dairy markets in Canada, sugar markets in the United States and rice markets in Japan...

Australia, Chile and New Zealand also continue to resist the push by the United States to protect the intellectual property of major pharmaceutical companies for as long as 12 years, shielding them from generic competition as they recoup the cost of developing next-generation biologic medicines."

Negotiators say they substantially narrowed the number of outstanding issues. They vowed to keep the momentum going. But, as one non-United States official said, if talks go into hiatus for long, it could be easier for many of the countries to say no than yes."