IFLA Review of Copyright Policy Changes Around the World
[International Federation of Library Associations (CC-BY)] After our blog post Copyright for Libraries in 2018, we have engaged with the CLM network to keep up the effort of spotting copyright changes around the world. Here’s an update at the start of the second half of the year. Click here for more.
What’s Going on With the EU Copyright Reform for Education?
[Lisette Kalshoven] The next major step in the EU copyright reform process is the vote scheduled for 12 September, when the entire European Parliament (about 750 people) will vote on amendments that are being put forward until 5 September. They will vote on amendments to the text put forward by the European Commission, which was shared back in 2016. The JURI report, which was rejected on 5 July by the parliament had several improvements for the education exception on article 4. It was, however, not nearly enough to truly make copyright work for education in Europe. For the purpose of the vote on 12 September, we need to work with the Commission text. Below we will share the three most important things to fix. Click here for more.
A Sliver of Hope: Analyzing Voluntary Licenses to Accelerate Affordable Access to Medicines
[Brook Baker] Abstract: As a result of global AIDS activism, governments’ latent and exercised powers to bypass pharmaceutical monopolies, and halting pharmaceutical industry accommodation, a new form of voluntary licensing has emerged focused on first permitting and then facilitating generic production of certain pharmaceutical products for sale and use in many but not all low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). These so-called “access” licenses are pluralistic in detail and not free of commercial motivations for either originators or generic producers, but they do differ from arms-length, purely commercial licenses that have been broadly used in the industry for decades. Click here for more.
Support South Africa at UN – We Need Better & Affordable TB Medicines!
[Treatment Action Campaign] Negotiations are currently underway in New York for a United Nations (UN) political declaration on tuberculosis. … We urge the South African government to stay strong in the face of political pressure and to ensure the inclusion of a strong commitment on the use of TRIPS flexibilities in the main operative text of the TB declaration. This must include commitments to a) use to the full extent of TRIPS flexibilities to ensure access to medicines, and b) to ensure that intellectual property provisions in trade agreements do not undermine the Doha Declaration. Click here for more.
IIPA Claims that South Africa’s Copyright Reform Bill Would Make the Country Ineligible for AGOA Benefits
[Mike Palmedo] The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is conducting its annual review of country eligibility for trade benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). This law allows beneficiary countries to export certain goods into the U.S. duty-free. The benefits are conditional upon a set of criteria, which includes the protection of intellectual property. The International Intellectual Property Association (IIPA) has filed comments to USTR arguing that South Africa’s copyright reform legislation, if it becomes law, “would place South Africa out of compliance with the AGOA eligibility criteria regarding intellectual property.” Click here for more.
Behind the Scenes of Online Copyright Enforcement: Empirical Evidence on Notice & Takedown
[Sharon Bar-Ziv and Niva Elkin-Koren] Abstract: Copyright enforcement was one of the early challenges to the rule of law on the internet and has shaped its development since the early 1990s. The Notice and Takedown (N&TD) regime, enacted in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, offered online intermediaries immunity from liability in exchange for removing allegedly infringing materials upon receiving notice from rights holders. … Unlike copyright enforcement in court, where decisions are made public, we know very little about the actual implementation of the N&TD regime: Which players make use of the system? Who is targeted? What materials get removed and why? How effective is the removal of infringing materials, and does it comply with copyright law? Click here for more.
Civil Society And TRIPS Flexibilities Series – Translations Now Available
[IP watch] Patients around the world, in developing and developed countries, are encountering barriers to access to affordable medical products, in part due to patents and resulting high prices. This is occurring despite longstanding protections built into international trade rules to allow smaller economies to act on behalf of their people and make such medical products available regardless of patents. These protections are often referred to as flexibilities in the 1994 World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The prevailing view is that knowledge, understanding and use of them remains limited among policymakers and many potential beneficiaries, even as patent-strong nations and their industries work to narrow the reach and ability to use these flexibilities. In the face of this, global civil society in recent years have increasingly begun work to change the direction of this trend, with the ultimate goal of helping people everywhere – but particularly poor populations – obtain drugs they need that exist but are out of their reach. Now, the series of Intellectual Property Watch stories on this subject sponsored by Make Medicines Affordable have been translated into five languages. Click here for the series on IP Watch.
