Author: PIJIP

PIJIP Report from the World Intellectual Property Organization 2023 General Assembly

Posted by | Jul 18, 2023 |

[PIJIP] This month, PIJIP Senior Research Analyst Andrés Izquierdo attended the World Intellectual Property (WIPO) General Assembly on behalf of the Global Network on Copyright User Rights. The General Assembly serves as the highest governing body of WIPO, bringing together representatives from all 193 member states. With over 1200 delegates in attendance this year, the assembly provided a crucial platform for member states to engage in discussions and decision-making regarding significant intellectual property policy matters. 

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Excerpts of Civil Society Statements to the 43rd WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights

Posted by | Mar 21, 2023 | ,

[Eduardo Fajardo] The following statements were submitted by the participants and organized in document SCCR/43/INF/4. These are edited versions of selected manifestations by the members of civil society in the recent SCCR from March 13th to March 17th. Items 5, 7, 8, 9 were freely translated from Spanish.

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A Week of Events on Copyright and Access to Knowledge in South Africa

Posted by | Jan 9, 2023 | ,

[PIJIP] A coalition of academic and civil society organizations are co-organizing a week of debates on copyright and access to knowledge in South Africa, beginning on January 23rd. The organizers for these events are American University’s PIJIP, the University of Pretoria’s Future Africa, the University of Cape Town IP Unit, the Strathmore University Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law, the South Centre, Electronic Information for Libraries, Masakhane and the Wikimedia Foundation.

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Big Win: White House OSTP Releases New Guidance on Access to Federally Funded Research

Posted by | Sep 6, 2022 |

[PIJIP] The White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) issued an updated memorandum updating the 2013 White House OSTP Memorandum on Public Access to Publicly Funded Research Results to make “articles resulting from all U.S. federally funded research freely available and publicly accessible by default in agency-designated repositories without any embargo or delay after publication.”  It eliminates the 12-month embargo and makes articles—and the underlying data needed to validate results—openly available in machine readable formats.

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Save the Date – Global Congress #IPWeek2021 – October 25-29

Posted by | Jul 6, 2021 | , , , ,

[Fundación Karisma] The organizers of the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest will host an #IPWeek October 25-29, 2021. A call-for-proposals will be open soon, and in this edition, we will include a call for creative pieces about the intellectual property / public interest relationship in a post-pandemic world.

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Letter from 7 Civil Society GroupS to USTR Supporting LDC Request to Extend TRIPS Waiver for As Long As They Remain LDCs

Posted by | Jun 28, 2021 |

[Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, Fight for the Future, IP Justice, Library Copyright Alliance, Library Futures, Public Knowledge, and the Software Preservation Network] We urge the United States to support the request of Least Developed Countries (“LDCs”) to the TRIPS Council of the World Trade Organization (IP/C/W/668) for a transition period from implementing the TRIPS Agreement for as long as they remain LDCs. The current transition period is due to expire on July 1, 2021.

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Educators, Libraries & Researchers Praise President Biden for Endorsing Waiver of All IP for COVID in WTO TRIPS Waiver

Posted by | May 5, 2021 | , ,

[PIJIP] Today educators, researchers, libraries, academics and other advocates praised President Biden, USTR Ambassador Katherine Tai and the Administration for formally supporting the WTO TRIPS waiver, including for copyright. “By supporting a waiver of ‘intellectual property for COVID-19 vaccines,’ not just of patents, the statement would presumably extend, for example, to the copyright protection that can exist on computational algorithms needed to produce mRNA vaccines. It is less clear whether the Administration’s support extends to access to copyright for other needed activities, such as to repair software enabled devices or to enable text and data mining research. Clearly, however, this is a great advance for the cause of ensuring that intellectual property bends to the public interest, not the other way around.” said Sean Flynn, Director of American University’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property.

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Jorge Contreras Dicsusses the Open Covid Pledge on NPR’s “Academic Minute”

Posted by | Apr 12, 2021 | , ,

On April 7, Jorge Contreras was featured on NPR’s “Academic Minute” podcast to discuss the Open Covid Pledge. Excerpt: “In early March 2020, along with news reports about the rapid spread of COVID-19 and its serious health effects, stories began to emerge that patents could hinder vaccine and drug research, as well as the manufacture and supply of products necessary to contain the pandemic and treat those with the disease.”

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Call for Research Proposals

Posted by | Mar 29, 2021 | , , , , , ,

The Academic Network on the Right to Research in International Copyright is calling for research relevant to the development of global norms on copyright policy in its application to research. Text and data mining research, for example, is contributing insights to respond to urgent social problems, from combatting COVID to monitoring hate speech and disinformation on social media. Other technologies make it possible to access the materials of libraries, archives and museums from afar – an especially necessary activity during the COVID pandemic. But these and other research activities may require reproduction and sharing of copyright protected works, including across borders. There is a lack of global norms for such activities, which may contribute to uncertainty and apprehension, inhibiting research projects and collaborations. We seek to partner with researchers interested in exploring the means and ends of recognizing a “right to research” in international copyright law. In our initial conception, there are at least three overlapping dimensions to the concept.

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Letter from 20 Civil Society Groups to USTR Promoting a Balanced Copyright Policy to Benefit All Americans

Posted by | Mar 23, 2021 | , ,

[Joint letter signed by 20 civil society groups] Dear Ambassador Tai: Congratulations on your confirmation as United States Trade Representative. We write to request that the Biden-Harris Administration return to the Obama-Biden Administration policy of protecting and promoting fair use rights in international copyright policy. The Trump Administration abandoned this policy, and took the contrary position of pressuring countries such as South Africa to abandon fair use proposals. The undersigned organizations, representing consumers, librarians, archivists, educators, and creators, urge this Administration to once again prioritize fair use as an engine of equity. In particular, the United States should praise, not punish, other countries that seek to incorporate fair use in their national copyright laws.

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International Research Organizations Support WTO TRIPS Waiver for COVID-19

Posted by | Mar 21, 2021 | , , , ,

Over 250 organizations and prominent researchers and experts, representing millions of researchers, educators, libraries, and support organizations globally, call for reduction of copyright barriers to COVID-19 prevention, containment and treatment. Their statement, released today, calls particular attention to the need to include copyright rules within the waiver. Supporters of the Statement are holding an online public event and press conference Monday March 22, 9am EDT / 1pm UTC.

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A Doha Declaration for COVID-19? Professor Calls for Positive Agenda at WIPO SCCR

Posted by | Nov 20, 2020 | , , ,

[PIJIP] Covid-19 has forced schools and universities around the world to abruptly move online, necessitating the reproduction and sharing of works in the digital environment. Yet many nations’ copyright exceptions for education fail to protect user rights online. In his statement before the 40th World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), Professor Sean Flynn proposed a “Doha Declaration for Covid” to “explain and promote the current flexibilities in the international system, and encourage their expansive interpretation to fulfil human rights.”

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Amazon, Facebook, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Microsoft, and Sandia National Laboratories join “Open COVID Pledge” to make patents freely available in the fight against COVID-19

Posted by | Apr 20, 2020 | ,

[Open COVID Pledge Press Release] Amazon, Facebook, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), IBM, Microsoft, and Sandia National Laboratories announced today that they are joining the Open COVID Pledge by making all of their patents freely available to the public for use in the fight against COVID-19. Together, the group holds hundreds of thousands of patents and is offering to grant a temporary license that enables the public to utilize any of the pledgors’ patents in the research, development, and deployment of medical equipment, network products, software solutions, and other technologies to assist in this urgent public health crisis.

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500+ Civil Society Groups and Individuals Endorse Letter to WIPO: IP Should Not Hinder Efforts to Fight Covid-19 & Its Consequences

Posted by | Apr 5, 2020 | , ,

[Last update, April 13, 2020, 9am EST] 149 organizations and 358 individuals have endorsed a civil society letter to WIPO Director General Francis Gurry urging the organization to “take a clear stand in favour of ensuring that intellectual property regimes are a support, and not a hindrance, to efforts to tackle both the Coronavirus outbreak and its consequences.”

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Post-Hearing Statement to USTR, re: Generalized System of Preferences Review of South Africa

Posted by | Feb 28, 2020 | , , ,

[Sean Flynn and Peter Jaszi] This statement provides additional information in regard to the complaint by IIPA against South Africa in both the GSP docket… As explained by the many participants in the public hearing, all of the issues complained about in the Copyright Amendments Bill (CAB) have analogues in U.S. law or in the law of other countries that have not been challenged by the U.S. (including in the Special 301 process or in any WTO or other trade forum). Accordingly, sanctioning South Africa for these rules would lack a “general” basis and could also be considered arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedures Act.

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Joint Comment to WIPO on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence

Posted by | Feb 17, 2020 | ,

[Joint comment to WIPO endorsed by 16 members of the Global Expert Network on Copyright User Rights] We submit this comment in response to the World Intellectual Property Organization request in relation to its work on the impact of artificial intelligence (Al) on intellectual property (IP)… We comment here only on the copyright related questions in section 13. Some of our comments with regard to the framing of the questions and defining the differences between AI, machine learning and text and data mining may apply more broadly to the entire document.

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PIJIP Events in Brazil to Focus on Copyright and Rights to Education and Research

Posted by | Oct 30, 2019 | , ,

PIJIP, in its role as chair of the Global Expert Network on Copyright User Rights, will sponsor two events in Brazil to discuss how copyright can promote rights to access educational and research materials. The meetings are being planned at a time when these issues are being discussed in an agenda item of the World Intellectual Property Organization Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights. Brazil has also announced a copyright reform process. Details on the meetings, each of which is open to the public, are detailed below.

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Ahmed Abdel Latif
Alek Tarkowski
Alexander Dent
Allan Rocha de Souza
Andres Guadamuz
Andres Izquierdo
Brandon Butler
Brook Baker
Burcu Kilic
Carolina Botero
Carolina Rossini
Caroline Ncube
Carrie Sager
Celeste Drake
Christophe Geiger
David Levine
Eve Gray
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Stela Bivol
Sean Flynn
Stephanie Rosenberg
Susan Chalmers
Thiru Balasubramaniam
William Xu
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