Infojustice Roundup
Comments Received by the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator on the Next “Strategic Plan”
The White House’s office of the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC) recently requested comments from the public as part of the process of developing a new Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement. The request had specifically asked for “detailed recommendations from the public regarding specific recommendations for improving the U.S. Government’s intellectual property enforcement efforts; … written submissions from the public regarding existing and emerging threats to the protection of intellectual property rights and the identification of threats to public health and safety and the U.S. economy resulting from intellectual property infringement; … written submissions from the public to assist IPEC and agencies in the development of specific action items.” Click here for comments.
Patent Provisions of TPP Raise Concerns in Malaysian Health Ministry, Civil Society
Malaysian government officials and civil society have recently spoken out against the TRIPS-Plus provisions in the Trans Pacific Partnership. Health Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai recently told the Sun that “We are against the patent extension” that will lead to delayed generic competition, and therefore less affordable medicines for the public. Edward Low from the Positive Malaysian Treatment Access & Advocacy Group (MTAAG+) told Bloomberg that the agreement is “not good for the poor countries.” Click here for more.
Australia’s Support of the U.S. TPP Proposal on Limitations and Exceptions to Copyright Is Criticized
Shortly after the leak of the U.S. proposal for limitations and exceptions to copyright, Australian observers have criticized their country’s support of it. A statement by Green Party Senator Scott Ludlam was highly critical of the country’s trade negotiators: “information on the negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement revealed over the weekend show the US and Australia want to defeat a proposed clause protecting domestic intellectual property laws.” Click here for more.
French Culture Minister Says She Will Reduce Funding for Hadopi
In a recent interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, French Culture Minister Aurélie Filippetti said that she will reduce funding HADOPI, the French agency that enforces online copyright through a graduated response. Fililppetti said that “Within the context of budget cutting, I’ll request operational funding to Hadopi be reduced… I’d rather reduce financing of things whose usefulness hasn’t been proven.” She further said that “suspension of Internet access strikes me as disproportionate to the goal being sought. Hadopi has [also] failed in its mission to develop legal alternatives [to illegal downloading].” Click here for more.
Google Search to Reflect Sites’ Number of Copyright Removal Notices
Amit Singhal writes in the Google Search Blog that ” Starting next week, we will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results… Since we re-booted our copyright removals over two years ago, we’ve been given much more data by copyright owners about infringing content online. In fact, we’re now receiving and processing more copyright removal notices every day than we did in all of 2009—more than 4.3 million URLs in the last 30 days alone. We will now be using this data as a signal in our search rankings.” Click here for the full blog.
