Course Packs for Education Ruled Legal in India
[Anubha Sinha] On 9 May 2017, a five year court battle between publishers and universities finally came to an end when the Supreme Court of India dismissed an appeal by the Indian Reprographic Rights Organization (IRRO) challenging an earlier judgment of Delhi High Court that ruled course packs in India legal for educational purposes. In a case that gained wide international attention, issues such as the cost of textbooks in India were raised, students agitated for fair access to educational materials, and the jurisprudence on copyright in India has taken a leap forward. Click here for more.
Lessons From South Africa: Protecting Non-Expressive Uses In Copyright Reform
[Matthew Sag and Sean Flynn] This week, the South African Parliament began accepting comments on its pending Bill proposing to amend the South African Copyright Act to align it with the digital age. We and other experts and civil society organizations submitted comments praising many of the Bill’s provisions and proposing that it adopt an “open” fair use right. Here we focus on one major reason to adopt an open fair use right – to authorize so-called non-expressive uses of works. We conclude with some reflectio ns on how international law could help in this regard. Click here for more.
See also: Desmond Oriakhogba. Promoting right of access to knowledge for educational advancement: Indian court decision a model for South Africa? Link
The Value of Fair Use for South Africa – The Role of Copyright and User Rights in Promoting Social and Economic Progress
The Mandela Institute in collaboration with Google, Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI), and the American University Washington College of Law will host a roundtable discussion on the second version of the Copyright Act Amendment Bill ahead of its scheduled August Parliamentary hearings. Click here for more.
German Federal Court of Justice Grants Compulsory License in Preliminary Proceedings
[Mark Schweizer] According to its media release of 11 July 2017, the German Federal Court of Justice confirmed the decision of the Federal Patent Court granting Merck a compulsory license to EP 1 422 218 owned by Shionogi. This allows Merck the continued distribution of its antiretroviral drug Isentress, an approved medication for treatment of HIV-patients, on the German market. The case is highly unusual not only because compulsory licenses are exceptionally rarely granted under German law, but also because the license was granted in preliminary proceedings, which is a first. Click here for more.
Net Neutrality Won’t Save Us if DRM is Baked Into the Web
[Cory Doctorow] Yesterday’s record-smashing Net Neutrality day of action showed that the Internet’s users care about an open playing field and don’t want a handful of companies to decide what we can and can’t do online. Today, we should also think about other ways in which small numbers of companies, including net neutrality’s biggest foes, are trying to gain the same kinds of control, with the same grave consequences for the open web. Exhibit A is baking digital rights management (DRM) into the web’s standards. Click here for the full post on EFF’s blog.
Patent Nonuse: Are Patent Pools a Possible Solution?
[Alireza Chavosh] Studies have depicted that the rate of unused patents comprises a high portion of patents in North America (35% Non-use on average), Europe (37% Non-use on average) and Japan (64% Non-use on average)…. the current literature has emphasized on the role of patent pools in dealing with potential issues such as excessive transaction cost caused by patent thickets and blocking patents (overlapping IPRs) that might hamper the use of patents in the market for technology. Accordingly, patent pools may favor the use of the pooled patents through decreasing licensing transaction cost and providing equal and non-discriminatory access of all the members and potential licensees to the pool’s technology. Hence, companies willing to license their patents through patent pools might consider taking advantage of faster, easier, broader and less costly access to the pool licensees. Nevertheless, in this study we argue that the willingness to commercialize patents through pool participation by a pool member is not limited to the commercialization of those patents that the company includes in the patent pool. Click here for more.
