Intellectual Property shouldn't be just for the Rich and Powerful Part II

Yesterday I spoke about the inequality of access to the legal tools that protect investment in brands, design, technology and the arts even in very advanced countries like my own and what I personally have tried to do about it over the last 20 years. This inequality is magnified internationally.

A number of organizations try to do something about that and a pretty good means of keeping up to date with them is the blog and website Intellectual Property Watch. At the moment everyone's attention is focussed on the WTO ministerial in Hong Kong. There have already been a couple of good posts on those proceedings, namely a mention of the 6 Dec 2005 agreement in respect of generic medicines and Chinese legislation to implement an earlier agreement ("TRIPS Public Health Amendment Questioned; China Implements Decision" and "Experts Debate IP Issues As Hong Kong WTO Ministerial Opens", both by Tove Gerhardsen).

There is, of course, much, much more on all sorts of topics on the interface between IPR and development ranging from the medicines agreement, the extension of art 66 TRIPs, protection of indigenous and traditional knowledge, food policy to name just a few. I shall be inserting a link through to this site as soon as I have time to work on the template of this blog.