Linkdump 2009-06-18

Rio Tinto deal heralds huge changes - Mr Richard Susskind writes on a ground-breaking move of Rio Tinto, a leading international mining group, announcing today that it is outsourcing its legal work to India — triggering what is predicted to be an irreversible trend in the legal sector. The international mining group has concluded a deal with CPA Global, a leading outsourcing provider of legal services, and expects savings on its legal costs of up to 20 per cent.

EFF, Public Knowledge, drop ACTA lawsuit - The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge have dropped their Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) lawsuit. The two organisations were demanding access to important documents about the secret intellectual property enforcement treaty. They say, the Obama administration’s decision to support 'Bush-era concealment policies' has forced them to abandon their case. Federal judges have very little discretion to overrule executive branch decisions to classify information on “national security” grounds, “and the Obama administration has recently informed the court that it intends to defend the classification claims originally made by the Bush Administration,” says the EFF.

Way Forward on IP Issues at the WTO Still Unclear - Last week’s WTO Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights saw very little, if any, progress towards resolving TRIPS issues in the context of the Doha negotiations.