TACD IP Policy Committee

The Global Enforcement Agenda of copyright, patents
and other IPRs:
Some consumer perspectives

Wednesday June 10th, 2009

15:00 – 18:00

Venue: Hotel Radisson, 35 rue d’Idalie, 1050 Brussels

The TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD), Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) and Health Action International Europe (HAI-E) are happy to announce a public meeting on the issue of enforcement of copyright, trademark, patents and other intellectual property rights. The issue is part of a complex and important area of public policy that touches on personal privacy, civil rights, freedom, social and economic development, and plethora of other issues.

The European Union and the United States are engaged in extensive efforts to shape global norms for the enforcement of copyright, trademarks, patents and other intellectual property rights. These discussions are taking place in multilateral, bilateral and unilateral fora. The proposals that are under consideration would in important areas be significant departures from the norms of the recently negotiated World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). In that respect, the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiation lacks transparency and legitimacy, and needs safeguards for consumers.

Such policies raise concerns considering the delicate balance of rights and exceptions put in place by the international copyright law “acquis” and public health principles, including access to medicines.

The meeting will include a discussion with respondents from the European Commission and from the European Parliament.

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Speakers:

James Love, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) Washington, DC Office and US co-Chair of the TACD Working Group on Intellectual Property

Eddan Katz, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), San Francisco, US

Kostas Rossoglou, BEUC (European Consumer Organisation), Brussels

Alexandra Heumber, IP policy advisor for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Access to essential medicines campaign, Brussels

Henrique Choer Moraes, Permanent Mission of Brazil to the European Communities, Brussels

Peter Maybarduk, Essential Action, Washington, DC, US

Moderator: Sophie Bloemen, Health Action International Europe (HAI-E)

About the speakers

James Love is the Director of Knowledge Ecology International (KEI).  Mr. Love is also the U.S. co-chair of the Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) Working Group on Intellectual Property, chair of Essential Inventions, an advisor to the X-Prize Foundation on a prize for TB diagnostics, and a member of the UNITAID Expert Group on Patent Pools, the MSF Working Group on Intellectual Property, the Stop-TB Partnership working group on new drug development and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards.  He  advises a number of UN agencies, national governments, international and regional intergovernmental organizations and public health NGOs, and is the author of a number of articles and monographs on innovation and intellectual property rights.  In 2006, Knowledge Ecology International received a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.

Mr. Love was previously Senior Economist for the Frank Russell Company, a lecturer at Rutgers University, and a researcher on international finance at Princeton University. He holds a Masters of Public Administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. For the development of new medicines and vaccines, de-link R&D incentives from prices, through the use of innovation inducement prizes liked to open licensing of inventions. There should be sharing of some of the prize money with persons who openly shared the knowledge, data, materials and technology that was important for the development of the new product, through an open source dividend.

Eddan Katz joined EFF as International Affairs Director in 2008, returning from his summer internship in 2000. He is responsible for managing EFF’s international activities, specializing in Access to Knowledge (A2K) and digital rights. Before EFF, Eddan was the first Executive Director of the Yale Information Society Project and was Lecturer-in-Law at Yale Law School. He taught and writes in the areas of cyberlaw, intellectual property, telecommunications, and bioethics. Eddan received his bachelors degree in philosophy from Yale; and his law degree from UC, Berkeley’s Boalt Hall, where he was awarded the Sax Prize for his work with the Samuelson Law, Technology, & Public Policy Clinic. After law school, Eddan worked for Prof. Pam Samuelson as a Visiting Scholar at the School of Information at Berkeley.

Sophie Bloemen is European Projects Officer with Health Action International, a policy NGO headquartered in Amsterdam. She was educated in Amsterdam, Berlin, Santiago de Chile, Paris and London and has a background in philosophy and European Political Economy, having obtained a MA and MSc from the University of Amsterdam as well as a MSc from  the  London School of Economics.

Sophie started her career as a trainee for the European Commission in Brussels at DG Employment & Social Affairs. In 2007 she founded the Danube Foundation, which aims to contribute to the exchange of ideas and among Central, East, and Western Europe and to the construction of a European public sphere.

In late 2007 Sophie joined Health Action International.  HAI works towards a world in which all people, especially the poor and marginalised, are able to exercise their human right to health. HAI’s contribution is through advocating for increased access to essential medicines and improved rational use of medicines. With regional offices in Africa (Nairobi), Asia Pacific (Colombo), Europe (Amsterdam) and Latin America (Lima) and a Global coordinating office in Amsterdam, HAI is a non-profit, independent, worldwide network of over 200 members including consumer groups, public interest NGOs, health care providers, academics, media and individuals in more than 70 countries.

As Project Officer at Health Action International Europe , Sophie is concerned with promoting access to medicines, focusing in particular on Intellectual Property Rights policy.

Alexandra Heumber has been involved in the access to medicines issue since 7 years. She is now working with the MSF’s Access to Essential Medicines Campaign as the Intellectual Property Policy Advisor & EU liaison in Brussels since more than 3 years. After having been graduated with a Master in Pharmaceutical law (Droit des Produits de santé) by the University René Descartes in Paris, she joined the European Generic Medicines Association, then had an experience in a generic company Apotex in London. She aso spent 1 year in Canada at Health Canada (Ministry of Health) before joining MSF.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) (Doctors Without Borders) is an international independent medical humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural and man-made disasters, and exclusion from health care in more than 80 countries.

The Access to essential medicines campaign MSF doctors are constantly frustrated by the lack of adequate medical tools to give quality care to the patients we treat. In response, Médecins Sans Frontières set up the MSF Access Campaign in 1999 to improve access to existing medical tools (medicines, diagnostics, vaccines) and to stimulate the development of urgently needed better tools for people in countries where MSF works. From the start we faced two major challenges – the high cost of existing medicines and the absence of treatments for many of the diseases affecting our patients. Our response has been on the one hand to challenge the high costs of existing drugs or outdated treatment policies. On the other hand we have worked to stimulate research into new medicines for neglected diseases such as tuberculosis, sleeping sickness and malaria.

Henrique Choer Moraes is a career diplomat currently posted at the Permanent Mission of Brazil to the European Communities (Brussels), where he is also in charge of following the work of the World Customs Organization (WCO). Prior to that, he worked at the Intellectual Property Division of Brazil’s Ministry of External Relations, where he served from 2004 to 2007. In that capacity, he took part in negotiations on patents, copyrights, and IP-biodiversity issues at the World Trade Organization, the World Trade Organization and the Convention on Biological Diversity. From 2000 to 2004 he worked as professor of international public law at the University Ritter dos Reis, Porto Alegre (Brazil). He holds a master’s degree in integration and business international law from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre).

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Contact:

Anne-Catherine Lorrain
Intellectual Property Policy Project
The TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD)
80, rue d’Arlon, B-1040 Bruxelles
aclorrain[at]gmail[dot]com
aclorrain[at]consint[dot]org
Tel: +32 2 740 28 17
www.tacd.org
www.tacd-ip.org/blog

Sophie Bloemen
Health Action International Europe
Amsterdam
Sophie[at]haiweb[dot]org
+31 643 23 78 74