The 14th Standing Committee on the Law of Patents has just made available a draft text of a Future Work Agenda for Member States’ consideration. The Brazilian proposal on exceptions and limitations to patent rights has been mentioned on the document in order to outline further actions.

According to the Brazilian delegation, the proposal: "aims at contributing to the discussion of exceptions and limitations to patent rights. . . While not purporting to cover all interfaces of the matter with development concerns, it emphasizes the importance of promoting a wide and sustained debate on the issue in the SCP".

The proposal also states that a number of recommendations of the Development Agenda addresses directly or indirectly this issue, be it in connection with norm setting, public policy, technology transfer, access to knowledge or impact studies. For instance, recommendations 17 and 22 state that WIPO should take into account, in their activities, the flexibilities in international IP agreements as well as address in its working documents for norm setting activities issues such as potential flexibilities, exceptions and limitations for Member States

This proposal seams to be taken into account once, currently, the countries are in informals considering the following text:

Agenda 8: Future Work

1. [Following a proposal by the Chair,] the Committee

(a) reaffirmed that the non-exhaustive list of issues identified at the twelfth session of the SCP held in June 2008, and updated at its 13 session, would remain open for further elaboration and discussion at its next session(1);

(b) agreed that the preliminary studies submitted at the 13th and 14th session of the SCP would remain open for further discussion and comments at the next session of the SCP;

(c) decided that the 15th session of the SCP will:

(i) consider a revised preliminary study on transfer of technology, focusing on how the patent system supports innovation and technology transfer;

(ii) discuss the study on exclusions, exceptions and limitations prepared by external experts;

(iii) revert to the proposal by the Delegation of Brazil on exceptions and limitations to patent rights contained in contained in document SCP/14/8, with a view to consider further action on it;

(iv) consider two new preliminary studies in respect of patent administration as follows:

 a preliminary study on patent quality management systems, and
 an expanded preliminary study on dissemination of, and access to, complete patent information, including digitization issues;

(v) consider a document compiling the information received by Member States on how national laws and practices apply the client privilege or the professional secrecy obligation, respectively, to foreign patent advisors.

2. The SCP suggested that the Director General consider including, in the revised Program and Budget for 2011, provision for a Conference on Patent and [Public Health] [Food Security] to be held in the first quarter of 2011.

3. Presentations of the studies will be held at the beginning of the next meeting.

4. The International Bureau informed the SCP that its fifteenth session was tentatively scheduled to be held from October 11 to 15, 2010 in Geneva.

5. The SCP noted that the present document was a summary established under the responsibility of the Chair and that the official record would be contained in the report of the session. The report would reflect all the interventions made during the meeting, and would be adopted in accordance with the procedure agreed by the SCP at its fourth session (see document/4/6, paragraph 11), which provided for the members of the SCP to comment on the draft report made available on the SCP Electronic Forum. The Committee would then be invited to adopt the draft report, including the comments received, at its following session.

Source: KEI online-