Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue TTIP Stakeholder Forum and Side Event on Intellectual Property

Last week, the Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue held a day-long stakeholder forum on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, at which consumer groups heard from, and talked to, the Chief negotiators from the  US and EU.  The following day, a side event at the Capitol Building discussed the impact of the agreement on access to knowledge, access to medicines, and digital rights.  For more see

WIPO Copyright Committee: More Rights Or Limitations/Exceptions?

[Catherine Saez,] The World Intellectual Property Organization copyright committee meets next week with some uncertainty. Unable to agree on the future work of the committee at the end of the last session, delegates will have to decide how they want to advance work on a proposed treaty protecting broadcasting organisations, and on limitations and exceptions to copyright for the benefit of libraries and education. Click here for the full story on IP Watch.

Leaked draft of Commission copyright white paper based on flawed assumptions

[Paul Keller]  Earlier this week the IPKat leaked what appears to be an internal draft of the European Commission’s white paper on copyright policy reform (“A copyright policy for Creativity and Innovation in the European Union”). Once finalized this white paper is supposed to sum up the current Commission’s position on making European copyright policy fit for the digital environment. As such the white paper will build on work that has been undertaken during the last couple of years, which included the Licenses for Europe stakeholder dialogue, a number of studies commissioned by the commission and a public consultation on a review of the European copyright rules that generated more than 11 thousand responses. Click here for more.

The Effect of Patent Litigation and Patent Assertion Entities on Entrepreneurial Activity

[Catherine Tucker] Abstract: This paper empirically investigates the statistical relation between levels of patent litigation and venture capital (“VC”) investment in the U.S. We find that VC investment, a major funding source for entrepreneurial activity, initially increases with the number of litigated patents, but that there is a “tipping point” where further increases in the number of patents litigated are associated with decreased VC investment, which suggests an inverted U-shaped relation between patent litigation and VC investment. This appears strongest for technology patents, and negligible for products such as pharmaceuticals. There is some evidence of a similar inverted U-shaped relation between patent litigation and the creation of new small firms. Strikingly, we find evidence that litigation by frequent patent litigators, a proxy for PAE litigation, is directly associated with decreased VC investment with no positive effects initially. Click here for more.