10th Annual International Open Access Week Shines Spotlight on Increasing the Impact of Research & Scholarship
[Nick Shockey, SPARC, Link (CC-BY)] Hundreds of events will take place across the globe to highlight the power of Open Access to increase the impact of scientific and scholarly research during the 10th annual International Open Access Week taking place from October 23-29, 2017. This year’s theme of “Open in Order to…” is meant to move the discussion beyond talking about openness itself and instead focus on what openness enables-in an individual discipline, at a particular institution, or in a specific context; then to take action to realize these benefits. The theme also recognizes the diverse contexts and communities within which the shift to Open Access is occurring and encourages specific discussion that will be most effective locally. Click here for more.
TRIPS Council: Fears That Non-Violation Complaints Could Undercut Flexibilities In IP Trade Rules
[Catherine Saez] World Trade Organization committee members this week were asked to recommend to the upcoming ministerial conference whether to lift or indefinitely prolong a moratorium shielding intellectual property from complaints between members not involving a breach of a WTO agreement. Short of a consensus, the intellectual property committee will have to reconvene next month to try to find agreement. Separately, a two-year extension was granted to countries not yet having ratified the public health amendment to WTO IP rules. Click here for more.
Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Development: A Better Set of Approaches for the 21st Century
[Dean Baker, Arjun Jayadev and Joseph Stiglitz] … This paper aims to provide an intellectual basis to think about the relationship between development, intellectual property and innovation; where we currently are and what alternatives are available. For the most part, we are concerned less with the implications of current IP laws for the advanced countries as we are with their impact on developing countries. We focus here not only on the current pathologies of the system and on potential alternative ways to tackle its most egregious excesses; but on a more positive note, on what kind of “system” would best promote development and well-being in the developing world. Click here for more.
Opinion of the CEIPI on the European Commission’s Proposal to Reform Copyright Limitations and Exceptions in the European Union
[Christophe Geiger, Giancarlo Frosio, Oleksandr Bulayenko] The European Commission’s planned copyright reform proposes to adapt EU law to the challenges emerging in the Digital Single Market (DSM).[1] In particular, new mandatory exceptions and limitations should contribute to improving the creative ecosystem in the digital environment. This CEIPI Opinion does support the plan to develop a-much needed-strategy to take copyright into the 21st century and make it functional to the DSM, especially by addressing important needs with regard to access to copyrighted works in order to boost creativity and innovation, promoting cumulative research and sharing of knowledge-based resources. CEIPI moreover fully endorses the goal of the proposal of lowering barriers to research and innovation in the EU DSM; however, in order to address these issues in a satisfying manner, this opinion strongly suggests an expansion of the reform’s scope. Click here for more.
Freedom of Artistic Creativity and Copyright Law: A Compatible Combination?
[Christophe Geiger ] Copyright was originally intended to serve creators as an engine of free expression, protecting them from the interference of others and from all risk of censorship. To this end, a balance was conceived between exclusive control and freedom and in order to enable future creativity, some uses were kept outside the control of the right owner through limitations to the exclusive right. However, none of the existing systems of limitations in the various jurisdictions was specifically designed to address the creative reuse of copyright protected material in the context of derivative works. Click here for more.
Publishers Unite to Fight Copyright Infringement on ResearchGate
[Divij Joshi] ResearchGate, the world’s most popular scholarly collaboration network (SCN), which brands itself as an ‘online information society service’, might soon be facing its Napster moment. A coalition of major publishers, called the ‘Coalition for Responsible Sharing’, (which includes major publishing houses such as Elsevier, Wiley, Wolters Kluwer, The American Chemical Society and Brill) have issued a statement regarding the network’s alleged inability to adequately deal with alleged instances of mass copyright infringement, and have also initiated legal action against ResearchGate to “clarify its copyright responsibility.” Click here for more on spicyip.com.
