USTR has sent witnesses the schedule for its Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership hearing on May 29-30. There will be 61 witnesses over the two days. Each witness will have 5 minutes to give remakrks, and 5 minutes for Q&A.
Most of the civil society groups that work on intellectual property issues will testify on Wednesday afternoon. Most of the industry groups that frequently weigh in on IP matters are scheduled for Thursday afternoon.
Click here for the full schedule.
The following petition has been posted on the White House’s ‘We the People’ site:
Less than 1% of printed works globally are accessible to the blind. This is because laws around the world bar printed material from being turned into formats useable by the blind and visually impaired, or for such material to be shared across borders. That’s why 186 countries will soon convene in Morocco to finalize a Treaty that would empower the world’s nearly 300 million blind citizens with the same rights to read, learn, and earn that the sighted enjoy. However, huge and powerful corporations – many wholly unaffected by the proposed Treaty – are working to fatally weaken it or block its adoption. Ask the President to compel US negotiators to fight for a strong Treaty that gives blind people equal access to books and doesn’t burden those who want to provide them.
Click here to sign the petition.
Consumers International (CI) has commissioned the production of three papers, the first on the competition chapter by one of our members, and the other two by independent experts, respectively covering the investment chapter and how it affects A2K, and the free flow of information provision and its impacts on privacy. The papers are now available for your reading pleasure! Continue reading »
[La Quadrature du Net (CC-BY-SA)(Link)] In a plenary vote, the European Parliament just adopted a mandate to the European Commission explicitly allowing it to “include strong protection of intellectual property rights (IPR)” in the proposed EU-US trade agreement negotiations, the “Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement” (TAFTA), also know as “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership” (TTIP). Continue reading »
Carolina Rossini is Project Director, Latin America Resource Center, New America Foundation
Tim Berners-Lee’s visit to Brazil last week has rekindled hopes for a civil society frustrated by six postponed votes on the bill known as “Marco Civil.” This groundbreaking federal legislation would guarantee civil rights in the use of the Internet, and is sometimes called a “Constitution for the Internet.” For the bill’s rapporteur, Representative Molon, having the inventor of the World Wide Web visit and publicly support the Marco Civil is an essential step in breaking the legislative logjam. Continue reading »
Representatives Waxman, Lee, DeLauro, Schakowsky, and Bass have sent a letter to Acting U.S. Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis supporting a proposal by Haiti to allow poor countries extra time to enact stronger rules on patent, copyrights, and other forms of intellectual property.
The issue involves the implementation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which requires countries to adopt certain intellectual property standards. For instance, the TRIPS Agreement requires 20 year patents on all inventions (including medicines) and long copyrights on most works (including textbooks). TRIPS rules give IP owners the ability to set monopoly prices for goods, which can be unaffordable for many, especially in poor countries. Therefore, Least Developed Countries (LDCs) were granted extra time to implement TRIPS when the WTO was established, and this transition period was subsequently extended. Continue reading »
For many non-U.S. parties and public interest advocates, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) intellectual property chapter is seen primarily as a threat. It is the latest step in a long running agenda to shift between policy making forums to achieve new global “maximalist” intellectual property policies that are not achievable in multilateral forums. This narrative is correct. And the real politics of the negotiation suggests that the most positive outcome for the IP chapter may be its (or the larger agreement’s) failure. But the agreement’s negotiations does offer opportunities to discuss what a positive IP chapter might look like. Here is one more idea in that larger dialogue – ban the use of Special 301 between its parties. Continue reading »
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Arjun Karki, akarki@ldcwatch.org , +977 9851023254
Prerna Bomzan, prerna@ldcwatch.org , +977 9841209336
Deborah James, djames@cepr.net , +1 (202) 441 6917
On 20 May, global civil society networks LDC Watch and the Our World Is Not For Sale (OWINFS) wrote an open letter of protest to the Ambassador of Panama, Alfredo Suescum who is the current Chair of the Council on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
The ongoing informal negotiations between the least developed countries (LDCs) and the developed countries, on the extension period of TRIPS waiver granted to LDCs which expires by the end of June, is marred by unjust and unethical treatment by the United States, European Union, Japan, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, in particular, including the Council Chair. Continue reading »
As the Trans Pacific Partnership creeps toward an end game (which appears far off) it may be worth spending more time discussing positive proposals for amending the proposal in various ways. I have previously written on ideas for positive proposals from the perspective of the non-U.S. parties, both in the form of a short list of proposals and in a longer jointly-written article. This note focuses on copyright proposals for the TPP that should be of interest to U.S. negotiators in order to bring their proposal in line with their expressed policy goals as well as with recent copyright reform proposals discussed in Congress and by the Librarian of Congress. Continue reading »
Carolina Botero has sent us an English translation of the new copyright legislation that was recently proposed in Colombia to replace the controversial “Ley Lleras 2.0″ law that was struck down earlier last year by the Constitutional Court. The law is meant intended to bring Colombia into compliance with the IP provisions i its FTA with the United States, but public interest groups have warned that it expands the scope copyright beyond what is required, and contains confining language on limitations and exceptions, and includes criminal penalties for DRMs that would apply to a very broad definition of for-’profit’ activities.
The English translation is available here. The original version in Spanish is available here.
For analysis of the bill see blogs by Carolina Botero and Andres Izquierdo.
[HAI Europe] Open innovation, open access, crowd-sourcing innovation, innovation prizes…. All buzzwords we often hear in the media, employed by entrepreneurs, government officials or science journalists. The terms have become part of the discourse on innovation and science: companies crowd source their data and innovation, governments are opening up their data to allow for civic participation in innovation, open access publishing is gaining major ground, the US government now mandates it where government grants are involved. Various ideas and arguments play a role here. Moral arguments about social justice and public goods are certainly important, but so are ideas on effectiveness and models of innovation. Although many people have been working on open innovation initiatives for many years, the familiarity of these terms is a pretty recent phenomenon. Continue reading »
Our World Is Not for Sale (OWINFS) Network and LDC Watch.
Dear Ambassador Suescum,
We are outraged with the manner in which informal consultations are being conducted on the issue of extension of the LDC’s transition period. We find the current process to be unfair and prejudicial to the interests of the LDCs, the poorest and most vulnerable segment of the international community.
The LDC’s request has obtained extensive support from the developing world but the supporters of the LDC’s request have not been invited to participate in the current on-going consultations. Instead, the consultations have been limited to developed countries (that are opposed to the LDCs request) and to the LDC Group. It is outrageous that developing countries that have supported the LDC request (which together with the LDCs form the vast majority of actual members of the WTO), are being prevented from participating in the consultations. As a result you are depriving LDCs of their allies, while attempting to overwhelm the negotiating capacity of the poorest members of the WTO by placing them in an unfair position where they have to face the united might of the developed countries. Clearly the consultations have been designed so that the outcome will fail the LDCs. Continue reading »