Revisiting the Question of Extending the Limits of Protection of Pharmaceutical Patents and Data Outside the EU – The Need to Rebalance
[Daniel Opoku Acquah] The European Union (EU) has instituted internal and external measures aimed at protecting and enforcing intellectual property rights. In the area of pharmaceutical patents, the Union has also sought to protect its industries through patent term extension and data exclusivity. Recent EU free trade agreements (FTAs) with developing countries contain chapters on intellectual property that extend patent terms and data exclusivity for pharmaceutical products. Such acts further prolong the lifespan of protection given to existing products and limit generic market entry. Click here for more.
Copyright and Fair Use During Pandemic
[Ida Madieha and Tengku Nazmi Tengku Anuar] Malaysia, like many other countries, has opted for online distance learning in the face of social distancing caused by Covid-19. However, the shift to online learning has been met with less-than-promising results. The pandemic has, instead, brought to light the staggering inequality in access to education in Malaysia, intensified by outmoded copyright policy predicated upon assumptions of pre-pandemic normalcy. Worldwide, even though school closures have kept 90 per cent of all students out of school, 500 million students still cannot access online learning due to a lack of infrastructure. In Malaysia, a survey conducted by the Education Ministry found that 37 per cent of students did not have the required digital devices to access online learning. Click here for more from the New Straits Times.
Intellectual Property Pools and Aggregation
[Jorge L. Contreras] Abstract: This chapter in the forthcoming case book “Intellectual Property Licensing and Transactions: Theory and Practice” covers IP pooling, with an emphasis on patents. It begins with a discussion of the theoretical benefit of pooling, including efficiency gains and the avoidance of blocking positions, thickets and anti-commons. It then addresses antitrust analysis of pooling transactions from Standard Oil (Indiana) v. United States (U.S. 1931) through the 2017 DOJ-FTC Antitrust Guidelines. The chapter then turns to pools created to facilitate standard-setting, including the MPEG-2 and 3GPP Pools, and discusses the concept of complementarity and essentiality of pooled assets. It concludes with brief discussions of Princo v. ITC (Fed. Cir. 2010) and the rise of patent aggregators such as RPX Corp. Click here for more.
Pfizer Helped Create the Global Patent Rules. Now it’s Using Them to Undercut Access to the Covid Vaccine.
[Sarah Lazare]The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, whose Covid-19 vaccine with German partner BioNTech was approved December 11 for emergency use in the United States, has emerged as a vocal opponent of a global effort to ensure poor countries are able to access the vaccine. In October, India and South Africa put forward a proposal that the World Trade Organization (WTO) pause enforcement of patents for Covid-19 treatments, under the organization’s intellectual property agreement, “Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights,” or TRIPS. Now supported by nearly 100 countries, the proposal would allow for the more affordable production of generic treatments during the duration of the pandemic. As wealthy countries hoard vaccine stocks, and one study warns a quarter of the world’s population won’t get the vaccine until 2022, the proposal — if approved — could potentially save countless lives in the Global South. Click here for more on InTheseTimes.com.
Copyright and Economic Viability: Evidence from the Music Industry
[Kristelia Garcia, James Hicks and Justin McCrary] Abstract: Copyright provides a long term of legal excludability, ostensibly to encourage the production of new creative works. How long this term should last, and the extent to which current law aligns with the economic incentives of copyright owners, has been the subject of vigorous theoretical debate. We investigate the economic viability of content in a major creative industry—commercial music—using a novel longitudinal dataset of weekly sales and streaming counts. We find that the typical sound recording has an extremely short commercial half-life—on the order of months, rather than years or decades—but also see evidence that subscription streaming services extend the period of economic viability. Click here for more.
Austrian Article 17 Proposal: The High Road Towards implementation [of the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market]?
[Paul Keller] So far there we have seen two different approaches to implementing Article 17 into national copyright legislation. On the one hand, we have countries like France, the Netherlands, or Croatia who have presented implementation proposals that stick as closely as possible to the language and the structure of Article 17 while implementing its provisions within the structure of their existing copyright acts. In doing so these implementations essentially kick the can down the road with regards to figuring out how the conflicting requirements to filter (17(4)) and requirements to ensure that legal uploads are not filtered out (17(7)) can be reconciled. In the end, none of these implementation proposals offer a convincing mechanism for ensuring that creators get remunerated and that users’ rights are not violated. On the other hand, we have the German approach that proposes to implement Article 17 via a separate “copyright-service-provider law” (“Urgeberrechts Diensteanbieter Gesetz”) that substantially departs from the language in an attempt to capture the structure and effet utile of the directive. Click here for more.INFOJUSTICE ROUNDUP – DECEMBER 14, 2020
