Author: InfoJustice Eds.

Intellectual Property and Trade Measures to Address the Covid-19 Crisis

Posted by | Mar 25, 2020 | , ,

[South Centre] As the Covid-19 virus continues to spread globally, immediate actions to fight the pandemic is a major priority for all governments. In this time of crisis, the timeliness of response is critical. A coordinated global effort is required to ensure access to affordable, safe and effective treatments, diagnostics and vaccines that are developed, as well as access to medical supplies and devices.
The South Centre views with concern the attempts by some governments and industry players to monopolize the availability of those products for their own nationalist agenda or to maximize profit, ahead of societal interest in tackling this global public health emergency. The private enforcement of patents and government trade restrictions may pose a dire threat to the containment of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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A Public Health-Oriented Examination of Pharmaceutical Patent Claims: Sharing of Experiences at the Indian Patent Offices in Kolkata and Chennai

Posted by | Mar 24, 2020 |

[Lucas van der Hoeven] How to examine pharmaceutical patent applications to ensure access to affordable generic medicines while rewarding genuine pharmaceutical inventions, in accordance with the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), was the focus of two training workshops organized by the South Centre at the Indian Patent Offices in Kolkata and Chennai on 10-11 February and 13-14 February, respectively. These activities were part of the collaboration between the South Centre and the Indian Patent Office under a Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Industry and Internal Trade, Ministry of Commerce and Industries, Government of India. Patent examiners and controllers in the pharmaceuticals and biotechnology sections of the patent offices exchanged views with experts from the South Centre on possible approaches to the examination of various types of typical claims in pharmaceutical patent applications.

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Fair Dealing and Emergency Remote Teaching in Canada

Posted by | Mar 24, 2020 | , , ,

[Samuel Trosow and Lisa Macklem] In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, Canadian post-secondary institutions are replacing classroom-based instruction with online teaching for the remainder of the Winter/Spring 2020 semester. … As instructors grapple with the mechanics of making this unanticipated conversion, most attention is focused on how to use technological tools to accomplish this transition. Less attention is being given to copyright issues. We are worried that without some affirmative intervention in the form of copyright training, opportunities to take advantage of Canada’s broad fair-dealing rights may be missed. This article explains how copyright law applies to online course materials. We hope it will assist instructors, librarians, teaching assistants, students and administrators working in Canadian colleges and universities.

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Coronavirus and Copyright – Or, the Copyright Concerns of the Widespread Move to Online Instruction

Posted by | Mar 20, 2020 | , ,

[Eoin O’Dell] … in our race to go online in time to deliver classes to our students, we must not forget that copyright law continues to apply. In that regard, I’m delighted to note that recent reforms to Irish copyright law will make all of our lives easier. The Copyright and Other Intellectual Property Law Provisions Act 2019 (also here) [COIPLPA] amended the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000 (also here) [CRRA] in various significant ways, in particular relating to online educational uses of copyright material.

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Now Is the Time for Open Access Policies—Here’s Why

Posted by | Mar 20, 2020 | ,

[Victoria Heath and Brigitte Vézina] Over the weekend, news emerged that upset even the most ardent skeptics of open access. Under the headline, “Trump vs Berlin” the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported that President Trump offered $1 billion USD to the German biopharmaceutical company CureVac to secure their COVID-19 vaccine “only for the United States.”

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What We Hope for WIPO Under New Leadership: Neutrality, Fairness, and Transparency

Posted by | Mar 18, 2020 |

[Teresa Nobre] … it is of utmost importance that the new Director General’s stance on issues that have been key areas of concern for the organizations advocating for society-oriented reforms at WIPO clearly contribute to: ensuring full participation of civil society representatives and minimising discussions held behind closed doors; ensuring that WIPO’s work is based on solid evidence rather than the product of influence of private sector or other lobbies; guaranteeing that WIPO’s technical assistance activities are development-oriented and suitable to the national levels of development; and guaranteeing that WIPO and its staff are neutral and impartial sources of information and expertise.

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Google Submission to USTR, re: South Africa GSP Review

Posted by | Mar 18, 2020 | ,

[Google, Inc.] South Africa has made strong progress in crafting a fair use system that is closely modeled on the U.S. legal framework, including a four-factor test drawn from 17 U.S.C. § 107 that strikes an appropriate balance between the interests of authors, creators, and users. The adoption of fair use in South Africa would clearly benefit U.S. exporters, particularly when the alternative is a legal system that is less consistent with U.S. law.

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WIPO Nominates Daren Tang as New Director General

Posted by | Mar 11, 2020 |

[International Federation of Library Associations] The UN agency that manages the global intellectual property system – including copyright – has nominated a new Director General. As the current Chair of the organisation’s copyright committee – and as a modernising reformer nationally – he will bring a strong awareness of the needs of libraries to the role.

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Why South Africa Should Resist US Pressure to Extend Copyright Terms

Posted by | Mar 10, 2020 | , ,

[Paul Heald] The current term of copyright in South Africa is life-of-the-author plus 50 years. But the US is pressuring South Africa to extend the term to life-plus-70. Since the US is a net exporter of copyrighted media, like songs, books, and movies, US copyrights earn billions in revenue yearly. The US wants to prolong this trade imbalance as long as possible and deny foreigners free access to older US works.

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ARIPO Model Copyright Law: How Does It Score?

Posted by | Mar 9, 2020 |

[Electronic Information for Libraries] In October 2019, the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) released a new Model Law on Copyright and Related Rights. EIFL reviewed the ARIPO Model Law against EIFL’s ‘Core Library Exceptions Checklist’ that sets out provisions that every copyright law should have to support modern library activities and services.

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Germany sets bad example with the proposed implementation of the new education exception

Posted by | Mar 2, 2020 | , ,

[Teresa Nobre] A few weeks ago, the German government shared its proposal for the implementation of some of the provisions of the new Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive, including the new EU education exception (Article 5 in the final version of the Directive). Similarly to what we did with the Dutch proposal, we will provide here an overview of the German proposal to implement locally the new exception. This is part of our effort to track how countries across Europe implement this mandatory exception to copyright for educational purposes.

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Dissecting the ISOC/PIR/Ethos Transaction

Posted by | Feb 25, 2020 | ,

[Benjamin Leff] Significant concern and confusion has been generated by the relatively recent announcement by the Internet Society (“ISOC”) that it will “sell” its subsidiary, Public Interest Registries (“PIR”), to the private equity firm Ethos Capital for more than 1.1 billion dollars. Among other things, PIR operates the .ORG domain registry, which generates tens of millions of dollars of revenue every year. ISOC is a nonprofit charity under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, as is PIR.

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Implementing the New EU Press Publishers’ Right

Posted by | Dec 17, 2019 |

[Teresa Nobre] Last week, we launched our Guidelines for the Implementation of the DSM Directive. This is part of a series of blogposts dedicated to the various provisions analysed in our guidelines. Today we give a quick explanation of the new exclusive right granted to EU press publishers by the new Copyright Directive.

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Costs Cost: Key Considerations when Making Choices about Remuneration for Uses of Copyrighted Works

Posted by | Dec 12, 2019 |

[IFLA] Modern creative industries have, to a large extent, built themselves on the basis of copyright. Their business models depend on having – or acquiring – rights to sell or use content, which they can then sell in exchange for remuneration. These rights are what lies behind the need to pay for initial access to a work. They are also the reason why, once a library or other user has legitimately bought or licensed a work, they may also need to pay extra in order to make certain uses of it… These payments can represent a source of revenues for creators and publishers. However, they also represent a cost to users.

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Copyright L&E for Nonprofit Performance of Music Found Constitutional in Korea

Posted by | Dec 9, 2019 | ,

[Knowledge Commune] The Constitutional Court of Korea upheld Art. 29(2) of the Copyright Act as constitutional. The Art. 29(2) permits a public performance of commercial phonograms and audiovisual works if no profit is received in return from audience, excepting cases as prescribed by the Presidential Decree. This provision has long been under attack by music industries and European Commission.

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What Happens When Books Enter the Public Domain?

Posted by | Dec 4, 2019 |

[Jacob Flynn, Rebecca Giblin, and François Petitjean] Copyright’s underuse hypothesis is simple: that, unless publishers are assured of exclusive rights in older works, they won’t continue to invest in making them available. This of course contradicts a core tenet of classical economic theory, that investors will continue to produce copies of books (or anything else) so long as they can expect to get back more than they put in… We have now carried out the first international test of the underuse hypothesis – across the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. And, since we were analysing availability of works across jurisdictions, that enabled us, also for the first time, to examine how the availability of identical works differed according to copyright status.

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Our Guidelines for the Implementation of the DSM Directive

Posted by | Dec 2, 2019 | ,

[Communia Association] We are thrilled to release our Guidelines for Implementation of the DSM Directive. These guidelines explain different provisions of the new Copyright Directive and make suggestions on what to advocate for during the implementation process of those provisions in the EU Member States. They are aimed at local advocates and national policy makers, and have the general objective of expanding and strengthening user rights at a national level beyond what is strictly prescribed by the new Directive.

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Protecting Exceptions: New Survey of Legislation Safeguarding the Rights of Libraries and their Users

Posted by | Nov 29, 2019 |

[International Federation of Library Associations] A major advance in the most recent European copyright reform has been the inclusion of a ‘contract override’ provision for most of the new copyright exceptions. This addresses the problem that thanks to the principle of freedom of contract, libraries can often find themselves with fewer possibilities to allow for access to, and use of, a work than the law suggests.

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President Ramaphosa: Please Sign Copyright Bill

Posted by | Nov 29, 2019 | , ,

[Electronic Information for Libraries] In a letter to Cyril Ramaphosa, President of the Republic of South Africa, EIFL urged the President to sign into law the long-awaited Copyright Amendment Bill without delay. The Bill, amending the 1978 Copyright Act, was approved by the legislature in March 2019 and awaits the Presidential assent. The Bill introduces new exceptions for libraries, education and people with disabilities, and brings copyright rules in South Africa into the digital age.

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