World Wide Fund for Nature at WTO Ministerial Conference
WWF global lead for fisheries negotiations discussed how members of the WTO struggled to find a balance between prohibitions and flexibilities in the draft agreement text.
India sought extensive exemptions for their small-scale fisheries and felt that the agreement would interfere with their policy space.
Stronger provisions for limiting subsidies that drive overfishing, thanks to interventions by Pacific countries like Fiji and Papua New Guinea.
Anna Holl, global lead for fisheries at the World Wide Fund for Nature, discussed ongoing World Trade Organisation fisheries sector negotiations on harmful subsidies.
Many WTO country-members expressed disappointment with the lack of progress at MC13 in Abu Dhabi, while WWF remained hopeful that members would find the political will to revive negotiations and discipline harmful subsidies.
WWF will continue to advocate for stronger provisions and fewer exemptions for harmful fisheries subsidies, especially for large-scale fishing fleets and distant water fishing. They will monitor whether WTO members decide to continue fisheries subsidy negotiations in Geneva towards the next Ministerial Conference. Anna Holl hopes WTO members find an agreement on disciplining harmful fisheries subsidies.
“WTO members were able to find compromise, also thanks to an intervention by Pacific region country-members, by Fiji and Papua New Guinea, and some stronger provisions were included in the draft agreement text.
However, in the end, especially India, was not able to agree with what was on the table, and they were not able to conclude a deal.
Unfortunately, from our perspective, we thought it would have been a good starting point and a very good framework to control those subsidies that drive the overfishing crisis.” Anna Holl, WWF
World Intellectual Property Organisation
WIPO Conversation on IP and Frontier Technologies
Bytes, Rights and the Copyright Conundrum
Last week WIPO brought Intellectual Property experts from around the globe to discuss generative AI and copyright, among the speakers was Geoff Taylor, Executive Vice-President for Artificial Intelligence, Sony Music Entertainment. Also Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, Chief negotiator, SAG-AFTRA, who was also earlier in the week at ILO, to discuss fair compensation for creatives. His presentation will explore how fair compensation for creators could be defined, and how such remuneration could be collected and distributed.
Become a paid subscriber to hear some of the speakers in the coming days, in our newsletters, presenting on Text and Data Mining, Dr. Maria Vazquez, LLM Harvard, Professor at University of San Andres, Argentina, an IP lawyer who worked with Napster cases in the US.
Xuyang Zhu, Esq. at Taylor Wessing, IP Lawyer, presented the case on Training of Stable Diffusion Models x Getty Images, on infringement and trading on unlicensed materials.
Katherine Forrest, Partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, US, commented on the New York Times x OpenAi and NYT x Microsoft cases.
“This morning the EU AI act has reached a very important moment. We don't have anything like that in the United States. There are very important commercial interests at issue, for instance the publishers feel and the news organizations feel very strongly about the utilization of their content to train models, which they allege in their papers could be models of replacement for them.
So there are very strong commercial interests on that side of the question, and very strong commercial interests on the platform side, where there are these novel technologies, which are being used for a variety of purposes. Some to assist with text based writing, news writing, some being used for other use cases entirely and other industries all together.
So the commercial interests in the United States made litigation here inevitable, because there's a joining of very powerful commercial interests. And at this point in time, there are enough cases that are out there raising a variety of issues. I don't doubt there will be additional cases, but the cases that we have now may in fact resolve the primary issues one way or the other.
It's always possible that there could be settlements and that there could be a recognition that there needs to be a licensing market of some sort there. Could be an arrangement that is made between some of the content owners and the platform owners, and that could end up resolving the litigation prior to a judicial ultimate conclusion. That does happen in the United States, there have been public reports of discussions. We'll see where they go, but I don't see any alternative to having had litigation commenced in the United States to resolve these very important questions.”
Katherine Forrest, Partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, US, comments on the New York Times x OpenAi and NYT x Microsoft cases.
Interview with Carsten Fink, WIPO Chief Economist
WIPO International Patent Cooperation Filing Office Sees Growth in India
Global Patent Filing Trends Reflect Shifts in Innovation Landscape
In 2023, a shift in global patent filing trends emerged, reflecting new patterns in innovation across continents. China-based Huawei Technologies, Samsung Electronics of the Republic of Korea, and the U.S.’s Qualcomm retained their positions as the world’s top users of the WIPO international patent system. Despite their dominance, both China and the U.S. experienced a dip in cross-border patenting activity, signaling potential shifts in the global innovation landscape.
Innovators in India increased their patent filing activity by nearly 50%. This surge in India's patent filings, coupled with consistent year-on-year growth reported by the Republic of Korea and Türkiye, highlights the diversification of global innovation hubs.
Given rising interest rates and economic uncertainty, filings through WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) system experienced a 1.8% decline, marking the first downturn in 14 years. Similarly, applications in the international trademark system fell by 7%. Yet, amidst these declines, the international design system bucked the trend with a 1% growth, largely fueled by expanded activity from China.
While higher interest rates and economic uncertainties may have cast a shadow on innovation activity in 2023, forecasts of declining inflation rates for 2024 and emerging hotspots in regions like India and South-east Asia offer prospects for renewed business confidence and innovation investments. These developments may set the stage for a recovery in international IP filings later in the year.
WIPO emphasized the longer-term trends, noting the steady rise in IP use in an increasingly global, digitalized economy. Asia, in particular, has witnessed significant growth, representing 55.7% of international patent applications via WIPO — a substantial increase from just a decade ago.
Listen to my interview with WIPO’s Chief Economist, Carsten Fink, on WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty.
