Full Stop Ahead: Public interest in blocking digital content
It makes for the perfect ideological storm when IP law and ICT law meet and the right to freedom of expression stands in the way. Capitalist and socialist, activist and pacifist, pragmatist and idealist: differing legal experts abound in the battle for, or against, IP rights in the digital environment. Two recent developments which illustrate this tension, might serve South Africans well, if observed with care. First, the recent ruling of the General Court of the European Union in Constantin Film Produktion GmbH v EUIPO[i] made it clear that aural vulgarity could be a bar to the registration...
Read MoreIP Public Lecture – Hacking Back and Hot Pursuit
THIS EVENT IS NOW CLOSED Please contact us for a transcript of the lecture. The Chair of Intellectual Property Law will present its annual public lecture on 15 April 2014 with Dr Frederick Mostert, Chief Legal Counsel for the Richemont Group of companies which include Cartier, Montblanc, Alfred Dunhill and Van Cleef & Arpels. The topic of Dr Mostert’s address is “Hacking Back and Hot Pursuit to Protect IP Assets – a Scoop on the TradeKey Case”. In an age of digital threats, Dr Mostert will discuss the potential methods to protect intellectual property rights online. From the...
Read MorePatents and Public Health – The New Frontier
The long-awaited South African draft National Policy on Intellectual Property (the draft IP Policy) which was published on 4 September 2013 (read the policy here) has recently led to an unfortunate furore in the press. On 17 January 2014 Money MSN published a report based on a document that was leaked from the Innovative Pharmaceutical Association South Africa (IPASA), an industry lobby group comprising the local subsidiaries of innovator pharmaceutical companies. The document is a plan for a campaign prepared by U.S.-based consultancy Public Affairs Engagement, to delay and modify the...
Read MorePublic Health Sector and the South African National Policy on Intellectual Property
The publication of the South African National Policy on intellectual property (SANIPP) in September 2013 has opened a proverbial can of worms and the Pharmaceutical industry is up in arms. The SANIPP proposes the introduction of stronger IP rights through the introduction of, amongst others, pre-and post-grant opposition proceedings, and makes reference to the introduction of compulsory licensing provisions in the Patents Act. Whilst the focus is on various industries, the matter of public health and the pharmaceutical industry forms a central theme of the SANIPP. The Innovative...
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