Expanding Copyright User Rights in South Africa
[Sean Flynn] On August 18, a group of South African and international legal experts will work with South African filmmakers to better understand their rights as users as well as creators under copyright law. The meeting will focus on actions filmmakers can take to use and expand user rights in South Africa that are necessary to fully enable the vibrant filmmaking industry that already exists, and to support emerging artists. Click here for more.
See also: Briefing on “Copyright Users’ Rights and the Clearance Culture in South African Filmmaking” Link.
Website Documents How the U.S. Could Use Certification to Write TPPA Countries’ Laws
A new website has been launched today (www.tppnocertification.org) that documents the extraordinary process of ‘certification’ through which the United States claims the right to vet and approve other countries laws before it will allow a trade and investment treaty to come into force. This process has existed for many years, but it has been used more intensively in the past decade because Congress was dissatisfied with how some countries had been implementing their US free trade agreements. Click here for more.
See also: EFF. Certification Allows US Trade Negotiators to Rewrite TPP Copyright Rules. Link.
Taiwan Considers Patent Linkage Now to Prepare to Join the TPP in the Future
[Mike Palmedo] Inside U.S. Trade reports that Taiwan is taking steps to develop a system of patent linkage, which would prevent generic firms from gaining marketing approval for their products while originator products are still under patent. The country wants to join the Trans Pacific Partnership at a later date, and it expects that patent linkage will be one of the requirements for countries wishing to acceded to the Agreement… U.S. industry and government have been trying for a long time to prod Taiwan into implementing a system of patent linkage. A 2007 diplomatic cable from US State Department officials to the Secretary of State, titled: “Taiwan Pharma: Patent Linkage Going Nowhere” had this to say on the matter… Click here for more.
Piracy and New Product Creation: A Bollywood Story
[Rahul Telang and Joel Waldfogel] Abstract: While copyright research in the decade following Napster focused mostly on whether file sharing undermines demand, research has more recently asked how piracy and other aspects of digitization affect the supply of new products. Although revenue has declined sharply, evidence that weakened effective copyright protection undermines creation has been elusive. Instead, because of cost-reducing effects of digitization, the number of new recorded music products – and their apparent quality – has increased. This study examines movie production in India during a period of technological change that facilitated large-scale piracy. … While the number of new movies released had grown steadily from 1960 to 1985, it fell markedly between 1985 and 2000, suggesting a supply elasticity in the range of 0.2-0.7. Thus, our study provides affirmative evidence on a central tenet of copyright policy, that stronger effective copyright protection effects more creation. Click here for the full paper on SSRN.
How Many Jobs Does Intellectual Property Create?
[Eli Dourado and Ian Robinson] Abstract: In the past two years, a spate of misleading reports on intellectual property has sought to convince policymakers and the public that implausibly high proportions of US output and employment depend on expansive intellectual property (IP) rights. These reports provide no theoretical or empirical evidence to support such a claim, but instead simply assume that the existence of intellectual property in an industry creates the jobs in that industry. We dispute the assumption that jobs in IP-intensive industries are necessarily IP-created jobs. We first explore issues regarding job creation and the economic efficiency of IP that cut across all kinds of intellectual property. We then take a closer look at these issues across three major forms of intellectual property: trademarks, patents, and copyrights. Click here for the full report on mercatus.org.
Australia Eyes Copyright Act Amendment To Curb Downloading
[Catherine Saez] The Australian government is seeking to amend its copyright act to address online copyright infringement. To that purpose, a discussion paper has issued for public input until 1 September. In particular, the paper looks at trends in similar nations and proposes measures to dry up business models operating outside of Australia, and to extend the responsibility of internet service providers. The Online Copyright Infringement Discussion Paper released in July, makes a number of proposals to amend the Australian Copyright Act of 1968. Internet service providers (ISPs) say they welcome the discussion paper, but remain wary. Click here for the full paper on IP Watch.
