Getting Ready for WIPO
[Teresa Hackett] The 42nd session of WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), the global forum that sets international copyright law and policy, takes place in Geneva from 9 – 13 May 2022. It is the first full meeting since the start of the pandemic… Three topics of high importance to libraries will be discussed during the week: the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on libraries and education, a draft treaty for the protection of broadcast organizations, and an exciting new proposal for a work programme at SCCR on limitations and exceptions (L&Es) for libraries and archives, education and research.
New Survey on Access Barriers to Text and Data Mining Research
[Patricia Aufderheide] A new survey explores the problems researchers in various sectors experiences in attempting to use text and datamining (TDM), and you can help. TDM is a basic feature of daily digital life, for good and ill. It is what enables search; it drives targeted advertising; it feeds predictive policing; and increasingly for scholars it is a crucial tool to track networked behaviors and identify patterns relevant to their subject disciplines. Those disciplines are as wide-ranging as medicine, political science, engineering, legal studies and communication; for Internet studies, it is routine. But unless you work for a company that generates the data you want to study… it can be tricky to get your hands on the material. Copyright and contracts get in the way; so do terms of service. And library/archive policies. And, of course, lack of knowledge and misinformation. Our survey, offered in English, Portuguese and Spanish, will give us cross-cultural information on what problems researchers encounter, and what they do when they have those problems.
Webinar on Artificial Intelligence, Text- and Data Mining, and Big Data in Kenya
[Electronic Information for Libraries] EIFL is delighted to partner with the Kenya Copyright Board (KECOBO) for a webinar on emerging technologies of Text and Data Mining (TDM), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Big Data. The webinar is organized in cooperation with the Kenya Libraries and Information Services Consortium (KLISC), EIFL’s partner in Kenya, and the Right to Research in International Copyright Law project.
The AI-Copyright Challenge: Tech-Neutrality, Authorship, and the Public Interest
[Carys Craig] Abstract: Many of copyright’s core concepts—from authorship and ownership to infringement and fair use—are being challenged by the rapid rise of generative AI. Whether in service of creativity or capital, however, copyright law is perfectly capable of absorbing this latest innovation. More interesting than the doctrinal debates that AI provokes, then, is the opportunity it presents to revisit the purposes of the copyright system in the age of AI.
Submission to South Africa on Copyright Amendment Bill, re: Proposed Removal of “Research” As Specifically Listed Purpose Allowed Under Fair Use
[Sean Flynn] We write on behalf of the Project on the Right to Research in International Copyright, which is an activity of the Global Expert Network on Copyright User Rights. We write to advise that Parliament not eliminate “research” from among the specifically enumerated purposes for which the fair use exception in Section 12A may be applied, and to add a reference to “computational analysis” as a permitted purpose.
A TRIPS-COVID Waiver and Overlapping Commitments to Protect Intellectual Property Rights Under International IP and Investment Agreements
[Henning Grosse Ruse-Khan and Federica Paddeu] This paper considers legal implications that are likely to emerge from the implementation of a TRIPS Waiver decision. Assuming that a Waiver is adopted in the form presented in the May 2021 proposal by South Africa and India et al, we review the interaction between the Waiver and other commitments to protect IP rights under international IP and investment treaties. Our principal research question is to analyze whether domestic measures implementing the Waiver are compatible with the implementing State’s other obligations to protect IP rights established under multilateral IP treaties, IP and Investment Chapters of FTAs as well as BITs.
EU Copyright 20 Years After the InfoSoc Directive – Flexibility Needed More Than Ever
[Martin Senftleben] EU copyright legislation has cultivated the constraining function of the three-step test known from Article 9(2) of the Berne Convention, Article 13 TRIPS and Article 10 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty. Instead of transposing into EU law the dualistic concept of these international provisions – the enabling function that creates room for the adoption of copyright limitations at the national level as well as the constraining function that sets limits to domestic copyright limitations – Article 5(5) of the 2001 Information Society Directive and Article 7(2) of the 2019 Digital Single Market Directive reduce the three-step test to the constraining function that further restricts copyright limitations and exceptions (L&Es) which are circumscribed precisely anyway.
Singapore’s Copyright Act 2021: New Exception for Computational Uses and Updates to Fair Use and Educational Exceptions
[Mike Palmedo] Singapore’s new Copyright Act came into force on November 21. The law was amended to keep up with changes in ICT technology that affect the creation and consumption of copyrighted works. The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore has posted a good overview, and three more detailed descriptions… This post highlights three changes to the limitations and exceptions that may be of interest to InfoJustice’s readers.
Kluwer Copyright Blog: Research Exceptions in Comparative Copyright Law
[Sean Flynn] Promoting research and access to its products has always been a core purpose of copyright law, often expressed in limitations and exceptions for research uses. Recent legal scholarship has examined the need for copyright exceptions for text and data mining (TDM) methodologies, and the doctrines recently enacted to achieve this purpose. Empirical scholarship has highlighted the positive impact on scholarship of copyright exceptions for TDM and of more “open” exceptions for research uses. Until now, however, there has not been a collection and categorization of the world’s copyright laws according to the degree to which they provide exceptions for research. The Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property’s recent report, Research Exceptions in Comparative Copyright Law, fills this gap.
Intellectual Property and Investment Protection: A Misleading Equation
[Christophe Geiger] Without any doubt, important investments are often needed to generate creative outputs. However, the intellectual property (IP) system does not protect them as such; investments are only indirectly protected through the possibility to exploit and monetize the rights granted to a creator as a counterpart to the collective enrichment generated by the access to his new work. If the investment (however substantial) does not lead to a creative output, no protection is granted. This short opinion article tries to demonstrate that the progressive paradigm shift of intellectual property to an investment-protection mechanism is probably at the core of most of the current problems faced by the IP system.
