Open Access Week Begins Today
October 22-28 is Open Access Week, “a global event for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.” Numerous resources, including promotional materials, FAQs, and a list of events related to Open Access week are available is available at openaccessweek.org. There will be a kickoff event co-hosted by the World Bank and the Scholarly Publishing Academic and Resources Coalition today at 4pm EST, which will be webcast. Click here for more.
Notes and Webcast: American University Panels on IP, Trade and Development
On October 16, 2012, PIJIP and Public Citizen co-hosted a multidisciplinary event on IP, Trade and Development. The first panel featured Professors Jerome Reichman (Duke), Michael Ryan (Georgetown) and Walter Park (American). The Second a panel featured David Langdon (one of the authors of the USPTO Report IP and the U.S. Economy: Industries in Focus), Joe Damond (BIO), Burcu Kilic (Public Citizen), and Rashmi Rangnath (Public Knowledge). The third panel featured a keynote by Oona Hathaway (Yale) and a comment by Rochelle Dreyfus (NYU). Click here for webcasts and a summary of the event.
Singapore Study on the Economic Effect of Fair Use
A new paper by Roya Ghafele and Benjamin Gibert provides empirical evidence that Singapore’s adoption of fair use into its copyright law had a positive effect on it economy. The authors examine data from the private copying industries – defined as “those industries that manufacture and sell technologies and related electronic components, infrastructure and services, that enable consumers to record, store and transmit copyrighted materials for their own personal use” – before and after Singapore’s change in copyright law. They find growth rates in these industries increased from -1.97% to +10.18%. Ghafele and Gibert also examined the data from the copyright industries, and found a “very limited” decline in value-added, which was more than offset by the increase experienced by the private copying industries. Click here for more.
Ugandan Center for Health Human Rights Publishes Guidelines for Changes to Industrial Property Bill
The Ugandan Center for Health Human Rights and Development has published a set of Model Provisions to Promote Access to Affordable Medicines in the country’s IP legislation that has been under debate for three years. The booklet warns that the Industrial Property Bill 2009 “unnecessarily goes over and above the minimum required standards in protection inventions, trademarks, industrial designs and other forms of industrial property,” which will impact Ugandans’ access to medicines. It contains clause by clause “some of the adjustments that are needed in the bill in line with recommendations made by stakeholders at a consultative meeting held in March 2012. Click here for more.
British Columbia to Offer Students Free Textbooks Under Creative Commons Licenses
British Columbia’s Ministry of Advanced Education, Innovation and Technology has announced that it will “offer students free online, open textbooks for the 40 most popular post-secondary courses.” The project will be coordinated by BCcampus, which said in a statement that the textbooks will be made available for free under Creative Commons licenses, or available in printed form for a low cost. Executive Director David Porter explained in a statement that “Open licenses are integral to making textbooks free for students, and flexible enough for instructors to customize the material to suit their courses.” Click here for more.
Where do Music Collections Come From?
[Joe Karaganis] In our last installment, we noted that there’s a sharp generational divide (in the US and Germany) in attitudes toward copying and file sharing, with those under 30 showing more acceptance of these practices in general and much more acceptance of sharing within loosely-defined communities of ‘friends.’ Not rocket science, right? But how does that translate into actual behavior? Here are average music file collections, divided by age group? Click here for more.
Slow Progress on WIPO Treaty for Copyright Exceptions for People with Disabilities
Last week, the World Intellectual Property Organization hosted meetings on the treaty for the visually impaired. Progress was slow, and observers are unsure if WIPO will be able to conclude the negotiations by December as planned. WIPO released a new text in which many issues remain unresolved, and to which new bracketed text has been added. Last week’s negotiations were largely conducted without NGO observers present. Click here for more.
