New Policy Paper on Fundamental Rights as a Limit to Copyright During Emergencies
[Teresa Nobre] Today, Communia released a policy paper on fundamental rights as a limit to copyright during emergencies. This policy paper has been prepared in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused a massive disruption of the normal organization of society in many EU countries. In our paper we defend that, in order to transpose education, research and other public interest activities from public locations to private homes during government-imposed lockdowns, we need to be able to rely on the understanding that fundamental rights can, in exceptional situations, function as an external limit to our national copyright systems. Click here for more.
U.S. Government Co-Owns Remdesivir, Taxpayers Shouldn’t Be Cheated
[Public Citizen] Statement of Peter Maybarduk, Director, Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines Program. Note: The Washington Post reported today that according to an analysis by the PrEP4All Collaboration, the U.S. government likely co-owns the core patents for the experimental COVID-19 treatment remdesivir with Gilead Sciences. Public Citizen previously found that public financial support for remdesivir’s development totals at least $70.5 million, through federal grants and clinical trials. Public Citizen has called on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to release all remdesivir research data and called on Gilead Sciences to price remdesivir at $1 per day or release its cost data to show why the price should be higher. Click here for more.
See also: Christopher Rowland for the Washington Post. Taxpayers paid to develop remdesivir but will have no say when Gilead sets the price. Link.
A Coalition of Student Organizations Launch Advocacy Tracker Tool of Public Funds for COVID-19 at Key Universities
[Universities Allied for Essential Medicine Europe] Today, May 18th, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), in collaboration with multiple American medical student organizations, has launched an interactive mapping tool that highlights key research universities and institutions that are receiving taxpayer money to develop novel diagnostics, therapeutics, and/or vaccines for COVID-19. The tool powerfully demonstrates the indispensable role of universities, public research institutions and public funding in the development of novel medical technologies. By visualizing where public funding is being directed, this tool contributes to transparency regarding the current significant levels of public investment and aims to hold research universities and institutions accountable to their social responsibilities to the public by ensuring any resulting technologies will be affordable and accessible to all. Click here for more.
World Leaders Unite In Call for a People’s Vaccine Against COVID-19
[UNAIDS Press Release] More than 140 world leaders and experts, including the President of South Africa and Chair of the African Union, Cyril Ramaphosa, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, the President of the Republic of Senegal, Macky Sall and the President of the Republic of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo have signed an open letter calling on all governments to unite behind a people’s vaccine against COVID-19. The call was made just days before health ministers meet virtually for the World Health Assembly on 18 May. The letter, which marks the most ambitious position yet set out by world leaders on a COVID-19 vaccine, demands that all vaccines, treatments and tests be patent-free, mass produced, distributed fairly and made available to all people, in all countries, free of charge. Click here for more.
FOIA: Film Industry Lobbies South Africa’s Parliament to Suspend Copyright Amendment Bill
[Thiru Balasubramaniam] Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) has obtained 311 pages of correspondence between officials from the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) and employees of the Motion Picture Association (MPA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and other entities including law firms on matters regarding South Africa and copyright policy. The FOIA request was filed by Claire Cassedy on October 29, 2019… The correspondence dates from December 2018 to November 2019 and reveals an assiduous campaign mounted by the MPA and RIAA to thwart the passage of South Africa’s Copyright Amendment Bill in the South African Parliament and to prevents its signing by the President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa. The MPA and RIIA, working in concert with the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) petitioned USTR to impose higher tariffs on South Africa (by revoking the Generalized System of Preferences) over concerns with, inter alia, the fair use provisions contained in South Africa’s Copyright Amendment Bill. Click here for more on keionline.org.
Open Letter to the EU Ambassador to South Africa on Copyright Laws
[Association for Progressive Communications and International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions] … stakeholders across South Africa have being waiting for many years for the update of the country’s copyright laws. With the last reform having taken place 40 years ago, there is a pressing need to bring laws into the digital age, as well as to address the significant problems around the governance of rightholder organisations set out by the Farlam Commission. The resulting bill achieves many of these goals. Click here for more.
Non-Violation and Situation Complaints Under the TRIPS Agreement: Implications for Developing Countries
[Nirmalya Syam] While the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) provided for the applicability of non-violation and situation complaints to the settlement of disputes in the area of intellectual property (IP), when the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements were adopted in 1994, a moratorium was put in place until WTO Members could agree on the scope and modalities for the application of such complaints. However, for more than two decades, discussions in the TRIPS Council on the subject have remained inconclusive. The biannual WTO Ministerial Conference has granted extensions of the moratorium with regularity. This paper reviews the debate on the applicability of non-violation and situation complaints under the TRIPS Agreement, including the arguments consistently held by two WTO Members that if the moratorium is not extended by consensus, non-violation and situation complaints would become automatically applicable. Click here for more.
EIFL Comments on Kenya’s IP Bill
[Electronic Information for Libraries] EIFL has provided comments to the Kenya Copyright Board (KECOBO) on the draft Intellectual Property Bill, 2020, which aims to consolidate existing laws relating to intellectual property. The draft Bill also proposes mandating the development of a national strategy and policy on intellectual property, a potentially useful means of framing copyright within national priority areas such as literacy and education, digital inclusion, research and innovation. A national strategy also provides the opportunity to highlight the place of libraries in national information infrastructures that help deliver on government policies, and the need for copyright laws to support library activities and services in pursuit of these public interest objectives. Click here for more.
Data Mining Under the Revised Swiss Copyright Act
[Andreas Jaeggi and Ramona Bollhalder] On 1 April 2020, the amendments to the Swiss Copyright Act (CopA), which the Federal Parliament had adopted last September after years of preparatory work, finally came into force. The primary aim of the revision was to adapt the CopA to the Internet age, for purposes of which compromise solutions were enacted in several different areas in order to address the divergent interests of authors, producers and users. The present article deals with the newly introduced exception to copyright protection in the context of scientific research and its application to data mining and its subtype text mining, often referred to collectively as Text & Data Mining (TDM). Click here for more on the Lexology site.
