Licensing Protected Materials

Convocatoria a Charlas (Cumbre Mundial de Creative Commons)

Posted by REPOST on April 15, 2013 No Responses »

Apr 152013

[Creative Commons Colombia (Link) (CC-BY)]La Cumbre Mundial de Creative Commons, que se realizará este año en Buenos Aires – Argentina, lanzó oficialmente la Convocatoria a Sesiones y Charlas, que harán parte del programa principal de la Cumbre.

“Los asistentes a la cumbre discutirán las estrategias para fortalecer Creative Commons y su comunidad en todo el mundo, aprender sobre los últimos acontecimientos en el movimiento mundial de bienes comunes, y mostrar los proyectos locales e internacionales que utilizan las licencias Creative Commons. Es un lugar ideal para reunirse y presentar sus ideas a la comunidad más amplia de Creative Commons. Más importante aún, esta será nuestra primera Cumbre con un apartado en español en el programa. Continue reading »

Open Education Around the World – A 2013 Open Education Week Summary

Posted by REPOST on April 8, 2013 No Responses »

Apr 082013

[Blog post by Creative Commons, (CC-BY)] Creative Commons congratulates all those who participated in the second annual Open Education Week March 11-15, 2013. It’s impressive to see how global open education has become with contributors from over 30 different countries showcasing their work and more than 20,000 people from over 130 countries visiting the Open Education Week website during the week. Open Education Week featured over 60 webinars open to participation from anyone and numerous local events and workshops around the world.

We thought we’d highlight a few Creative Commons global affiliate events from Open Education Week and share a list of urls for Open Education Week webinar recordings the Open Courseware Consortium has published. Continue reading »

California Unveils Bill to Provide Openly Licensed, Online College Courses for Credit

Posted by REPOST on March 14, 2013 No Responses »

Mar 142013

Edward Headington (CC-BY)

[Cable Green, CC-BY, Creative Commons] Today California (CA) Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (author of the CA open textbook legislation) announced that SB 520 will be amended to provide open, online college courses for credit. In short, the bill will allow CA students, enrolled in CA public colleges and universities, to take online courses from a pool of 50 high enrollment, introductory courses, offered by 3rd parties, in which CA students cannot currently gain access from their public CA university or community college. Students must already be enrolled in the CA college or university in which they want to receive credit. The 50 courses and plans for their assessment will be reviewed and approved (or not) by a faculty committee prior to being admitted into this new online course marketplace. Continue reading »

Creative Commons and the Openness of Open Access

Posted by Michael Carroll on March 1, 2013 No Responses »

Mar 012013

Photo by Ito (CC-BY-2.0)

[Excerpt from essay published in the New England Journal of Medicine] The Internet has inspired multiple movements toward greater openness — most prominently, open access, open data, open science, and open educational resources. None of these is based on the belief that there should be such a thing as a free lunch, but each recognizes that the Internet changes the economics of publication and digital-resource sharing so that changes can feasibly be made to traditional practices that are in some ways “closed,” requiring payment for access to information or prohibiting myriad reuses of accessible information. The quality of “openness” applies to both the terms of access and the terms of use. Advocates in each movement — and I am one, serving on the boards of directors of two organizations promoting open access, Creative Commons and the Public Library of Science (PLOS) — share an understanding that an open resource is freely accessible over the Internet. Opinions vary about the terms of use necessary for a resource to be open. Continue reading »

Detailed Analysis of the Medicines Patent Pool-ViiV Pediatric ARV License and Memorandum of Understanding

Posted by Brook Baker on February 28, 2013 No Responses »

Feb 282013

Brook Baker

Introduction:

On February 27, the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) and ViiV Healthcare UK Limited (ViiV) announced their License Agreement on an older antiretroviral (ARV), abacavir (ABC), for pediatric treatment only, in 118 countries where 98.7% of child living with HIV live. They also entered into a separate, non-binding Memorandum of Agreement (MoU), which promises collaboration on pediatric licensing of pipeline ARVs, development of novel combination pediatric formulations, and availability of novel pediatric formulations outside of the licensed territory. Continue reading »

Creative Commons Canada Participates in the Open Government Licence Consultation

Posted by REPOST on February 14, 2013 No Responses »

Feb 142013

[Posted on creativecommons.ca, CC-BY] In response to the Government of Canada’s call for comments on the Proposed Open Government Licence Agreement, Creative Commons Canada submitted the feedback posted below. The government plans to apply this licence to many of the hundreds of thousands of copyrighted works that it shares with the Canadian public. We feel it is important that the government ensures its licence is “Creative Commons friendly” so that everyone may enjoy these public materials and freely remix them with existing Creative Commons works. Our commentary adds our voice to other excellent feedback from the Open Definition Advisory Council, Herb Lainchbury and Teresa Scassa. Continue reading »

The EU Commission’s Outrageous Attempt to Avoid Copyright Reform

Posted by REPOST on February 7, 2013 No Responses »

Feb 072013

[Reposted from La Quadrature du Net, CC-BY-SA] Brussels, 4 Feb 2013 — Today starts “Licences for Europe”, an initiative by the European Commission to discuss the issues of today’s copyright regime. Instead of planning for a broad reform that would break away with full-on repression of cultural practices based on sharing and remixing, the Commission is setting up a parody of a debate. 75% of the participants to the working-group concerning “users” are affiliated with the industry1 and the themes and objectives are defined so as to ensure that the industry has its way and that nothing will change. Through this initiative, the EU Commission shows its contempt of the many citizens who participated in defeating ACTA and are still mobilized against repressive policies. Continue reading »

India Hears Appeal of Compulsory License for Cancer Drug Sorafenib

Posted by Mike Palmedo on January 22, 2013 No Responses »

Jan 222013

Image: Kaiser Permanente

India’s Intellectual Property Appellate Board is hearing Bayer’s appeal to the government’s compulsory license for patents on the drug Sorafenib (sold under the brand name Nexavar by Bayer). This medicine is used to treat kidney and liver cancer. The branded drug costs 2,800,000 rupees (USD 5,214) per patient per month and the generic costs 8,880 rupees (USD 165) per patient per month (USD prices based on today’s exchange rate). The compulsory license was issued under Section 84 of the Patents Act, on the grounds that the invention was “not available to the public at a reasonably affordable price,” and therefore not reasonably worked in India. Continue reading »

Compulsory License for Anti-Cancer Drugs – Update from Campaign for Affordable Trastuzumab

Posted by REPOST on January 14, 2013 No Responses »

Jan 142013

Press Release by the Campaign for Affordable Trastuzumab

CONTACT:

Kalyani Menon-Sen: +91 9910306382, kmenonsen[at] gmail.com
Leena Menghaney: +91 9811365412, leenamenghaney [at] gmail.com

The Campaign for Affordable Trastuzumab welcomes the news that the Government of India has started the process of issuing compulsory licences for the manufacture of biosimilars of three cancer drugs – Trastuzumab, Dasatinib and Ixabepilone. [See Govt moves to make three key cancer drugs cheaper, 12 Jan 13, New Delhi, Indian Express] Continue reading »

Africa’s First Creative Commons 3.0 Licenses!

Posted by REPOST on December 3, 2012 No Responses »

Dec 032012

CC-BY Matt Lucht

[Aurelia J. Schultz, Creative Commons Uganda. Original post on CC Affiliates blog.] We are pleased to announce the launch of the Creative Commons 3.0 Uganda licenses. Since joining the Creative Commons family in March of 2011, the Ugandan team has been incredibly busy: hosting the African Regional Meeting, pulling together petitions for the Pan-African Intellectual Property Organization, and spreading the news about CC licenses. While doing all these great activities, they’ve also completed one of the last 3.0 ports.

The licenses are available through the license chooser, and like all of our licenses, are intended for use anywhere in the world. The Uganda 3.0 licenses are important as the first 3.0 licenses in Africa and one of the last 3.0 ports before the launch of the new 4.0 licenses. Continue reading »

Access Victories and the Global Kaletra Campaign

Posted by Stephanie Rosenberg on November 21, 2012 No Responses »

Nov 212012

Photo: Public Citizen

[Reposted with permission from citizen.org] November 10, 2012 marked the first anniversary of the global Kaletra campaign, a campaign comprising health groups in 12 countries challenging pharmaceutical monopolies including Abbott Laboratories’ hold on HIV/AIDS treatment Kaletra and its components lopinavir and ritonavir. These groups have taken actions through compulsory license requests, patent oppositions, litigation and public campaigning to promote generic competition and lower costs. Several new significant victories have been achieved. For example, Indonesia issued licenses for seven medicines treating hepatitis B and HIV (including lopinavir+ritonavir). Ecuador issued a second compulsory license for an ARV treatment. A Colombian appellate court ruled that the Ministry of Health violated collective rights to health by failing to require Abbott to comply with the reference price for Kaletra (the Ministry has since imposed this requirement, reducing Kaletra prices by 70%) and must maintain Kaletra on a parallel imports list. Read below a summary of the actions in each country — and join us! Continue reading »

Nature Publishing Group to Allow Authors to License Their Work Under Creative Commons Attribution Licenses

Posted by Mike Palmedo on November 16, 2012 No Responses »

Nov 162012

Earlier this month the Nature Publishing Group announced a new policy allowing authors of articles published in all 19 of its journals to publish under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license. Authors choosing to make their work available under a CC-BY license will pay a “premium” article processing charge, which Nature says will make up for income it typically earns on reprints.

David Hoole, Nature’s Marketing Director said that “We want to encourage more researchers to make their articles accessible, and maximize reuse, by giving authors a choice of licenses they can be comfortable with.” Continue reading »

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