On 30 May 2013, the Australian Parliament was presented with a Bill for an Act to amend legislation relating to intellectual property, called the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment Bill 2013 (report here). The 2013 bill focusses on 5 areas (which were not addressed in the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment (Raising the Bar) Act 2012) and also seeks to clarify some of the Raising the Bar provisions on each of the Patents Act 1990, Trade Marks Act 1995, Designs Act 2003 and the Plant Breeder’s Rights Act 1994. In this post, we focus on the third Schedule of the bill.
Later Commencing Amendments
Schedule 3 includes amendments to implement the TRIPS Agreement as amended by the TRIPS Protocol, when it comes into effect. As discussed in our earlier post, Schedule 2 contains proposed amendments to enable countries to source generic versions of patented pharmaceuticals from Australia.
In essence, the proposed amendments in Schedule three insert reference to the ‘TRIPS Agreement’ into the Patents Act as needed to implement the agreement.