International Experts Commend UN/CEFACT
for Innovative IPR Policy1
Geneva, 4 October 2007 -- On 26 September 2007, a panel
of recognized Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) lawyers and standards
specialists addressed a Special Session on Intellectual Property
Rights held by the UN Centre
for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) during
its 11th Forum in Stockholm.
This session looked at the approaches to IPR taken by a range
of information technology (IT) related standards organizations,
with an emphasis on the approach taken by UN/CEFACT.
An important conclusion coming out of the discussion was that
the IPR Policy of UN/CEFACT provides an innovative and effective
solution within the standards development context. A number of
speakers noted that the policy provides significantly better protection
mechanisms for users and standards development than most of the
IPR policies implemented in other IT standards organizations. This
was highlighted in a presentation by Mr. Eduardo Gutentag, a leader
in numerous IT standards organizations. Another speaker, Mr. Thomas
Vinje, an IPR lawyer with Clifford Chance in Brussels stated that
he thought it was the best such policy that he had seen. It was
also suggested, in the question and answer session with Mr. William
Coats, an IPR lawyer with White and Case in the United States,
that the UN/CEFACT Policy be considered as a best practice example
for the next edition of the American Bar Association’s Standards
Development Patent Policy Manual, to which he contributed.
The innovative nature of UN/CEFACT’s IPR policy can be
attributed to the need for it to work within the context of the
United Nations. The policy was developed after a review of other
available IPR policies and was adopted in June 2006. Because the
UN/CEFACT IPR policy is both innovative and relatively new, it
was agreed that a newly created IPR Task Team would review ways
to strengthen the IPR framework, which is composed of the IPR policy
itself, related codes of conduct, procedures and processes.
For further information please contact:
Virginia Cram-Martos, Director
Trade and Timber Division
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)
Palais des Nations
CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Phone: +41 (0)22 917 2745
Fax: +41 (0)22 917 0037
E -mail: [email protected]
Website: http://www.unece.org/cefact/
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1 Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) policy for UN/CEFACT defines
the rights of participants in the standards development process
when they contribute Intellectual Property (IP) to a particular
standard (or other output, such as guidelines) as well as the rights
of users when they implement outputs containing this contributed
IP.
Ref: ECE/TRADE/07/P04