30 Apr, 2007: 2007 USTR “Special 301 Report”: US Dictates Domestic Policies on Intellectual Property to Foreign Nations
The Bush Administration’s Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) issued its much anticipated annual report of foreign countries targeted by the US for insufficiently protecting the interests of US intellectual property owners abroad. Under “Section 301” countries face crippling trade sanctions in retaliation from the US. A total of 43 countries were placed on the USTR's Section 301 Report in 2007. According to the annual review, US monopolies on producing medicine, CDs, and DVDs continue to be the main focus of US IPR foreign policy. China and Russia received a special lashing from the Bush Administration and were placed on the more serious "Priority Watch List" - as expected.

30 Apr, 2007: Yale Access to Knowledge (A2K2) Conference Enables Dialogue Between Civil Society, Business, and Govt
I'm just back from a beautiful weekend at Yale University where the Law School held its 2nd Access to Knowledge (A2K2) Conference. The meeting facilitated an important discussion among global civil society, representatives from business, and governmental officials from several countries. I spoke on the panel about the role of Search Engines in providing access to knowledge and focused on the legal and policy issues for search engines - here are my slides. Yale Law School's Information Society Project has done an amazing job in recent years of organizing conferences related to Internet and intellectual property law and policy, including the 2006 A2K Conference.

24 Apr, 2007: Reports Cards Out Soon! How well is your country protecting US interests?
IP Justice has prepared a summary of reports in anticipation of this week's release from the United States Trade Representative (USTR) of its annual "Special 301 Report" (a report-card on how well foreign countries protect the interests of large US intellectual property holders). The IP Justice table includes the last three years of USTR Special 301 Reports (2004 - 2006).

2 Apr, 2007: ICANN Board Vote Signals Era of Censorship in Domain Names
"While Friday's vote was specific to the application for a .XXX domain name space, the Board Members' vote signals their position as to whether they are comfortable with ICANN expanding its mission to become a regulator of online human behavior. By voting to turn down the .XXX application for public policy reasons, the Board indicated it will go beyond its technical mission of DNS coordination and seek to decide what ideas are allowed to be given a voice in the new domain name space. Unfortunately, it looks like it will be impossible for any idea that is politically or culturally controversial to be permitted a new domain name space by ICANN. ICANN is setting itself up as ...