Author: InfoJustice Eds.

Taiwan: Executive Yuan Council Passes Draft Amendments to Copyright Act and Copyright Collective Management Organization Act

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Jan 23, 2022 | Domestic Legislation

[Taiwan Intellectual Property Office] In order to accommodate the rapid growth of both digital technology and the Internet, TIPO has drafted an amendment to the Copyright Act. The proposed changes factor in both international treaty provisions and the copyright systems of those countries that are ahead of the curve. With the addition of 9 articles and the revision of 37, this would be the biggest revamp of the Act in 20 years. Another law up for amendment is the Copyright Collective Management Organization Act. TIPO hopes that changes to this statute will ensure a fairer and more effective licensing market—one in which works can be easily circulated and used, and one where the rights and interests of copyright owners are fully protected. Having been reviewed by the Executive Yuan Council on April 8, 2021, both drafts will now be submitted to the Legislative Yuan for further deliberation.

LIFTING BARRIERS TO COVID-19 RESEARCH – WILL THE WTO ACT?

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Dec 20, 2021 | Blog

[Teresa Hackett] EIFL supports the proposal at the WTO by South Africa and India, backed by more than 100 countries, to temporarily waive IP rights on COVID-19 vaccines and treatments… From a copyright and research perspective, there are three key components for the prevention, containment and treatment of COVID-19. First, researchers must be allowed to do the research. Second, researchers (and people) must be allowed to read the research. Third, libraries (and archives) must be allowed to save the research for future use. But these activities are not universally permitted. The proposed TRIPS (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights ) waiver would help ensure that scientists and researchers, no matter where they are, can undertake work on COVID-19 without legal barriers or roadblocks.

YouTube Copyright Transparency Report: Overblocking is real

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Dec 20, 2021 | Takedown

[Paul Keller] … On Monday YouTube published the first edition of its Copyright Transparency Report. The report that covers copyright enforcement actions on the platform for the period from January to June of this year provides much needed insights into how YouTube’s various copyright management systems function… So what can we learn from this first copyright transparency report? The overall take-away is that automated content removal is a big numbers game. In total YouTube processed 729.3 million copyright actions in the first half of 2021 of which the vast majority (99%) were processed via Content ID (as opposed to other tools, such as Copyright Match Tool and the Webform). And while YouTube claims that ContentID is much more accurate and less prone to abuse than its other systems ContentID has still received 3.7 million disputes from uploaders claiming that the actions (these can be blocks/removals but also demonetisation actions) taken against them are unjustified.

21 for 2021: Negative Intellectual Property Spaces

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Dec 13, 2021 | Academic Resources, Empirical Research

[Raffaele Danna, Arianna Martinelli and and Alessandro Nuvolari] The literature on negative intellectual property (IP) spaces investigates how innovation and creativity are incentivized in sectors where IP law does not apply, or is not enforced. This contribution seeks to offer an introduction to the concept of negative IP, the debates surrounding it, and the case studies of negative IP developed so far, with particular attention to those concerning copyright.

EIFL COMMENTS ON NAMIBIAN COPYRIGHT BILL

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Nov 29, 2021 | Domestic Legislation, Limitations and Exceptions

[Electronic Information for Libraries] Following a National Stakeholder Conference to discuss the new draft Copyright and Related Rights Bill under development in Namibia, EIFL submitted written comments on the Bill to the Business and Intellectual Property Authority (BIPA), the body that administers IP (Intellectual Property) rights in Namibia. The existing Copyright Act (1994) has no explicit provisions for libraries or persons with disabilities. The review is an opportunity to address this issue and to update the law so that library users and society at large can benefit from digital developments that are transforming library and information services around the world.

A review of the empirical evidence on copyright exceptions

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Nov 27, 2021 | Academic Resources, Empirical Research, Limitations and Exceptions

[Bartolomeo Meletti] Abstract: Exceptions are an essential part of the copyright system. They aim to encourage innovation, serve the public interest or respond to market failures. While extensive theoretical and doctrinal research has examined the history, nature, justification, and judicial interpretation of exceptions, empirical evidence in this area of copyright law is limited. This article aims to synthesise the empirical studies on exceptions currently catalogued on the [CREATe] Copyright Evidence Portal.

Vaccine Knowledge Needs to Be a global Public good

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Nov 27, 2021 | Access to Medicine, Coronavirus

[Ellen ‘t Hoen] The global health crisis caused by the COVID-19 outbreak has laid bare the lack of an effective mechanism for the sharing of IP and technology required to produce the diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines to respond to the pandemic. The WHO established, in May 2020, well before the first vaccines came to market, the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP): a mechanism to allow the sharing of the IP, knowhow, data and technology that are needed to meet the global need for 11 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines, as well as diagnostics and treatments. Companies have so far refused to collaborate with C-TAP, citing the age-old talking point that sharing IP is detrimental to future investments in pharmaceutical innovations – even though the development of COVID-19 vaccines has been de-risked with unprecedented amounts of public financing.

Pfizer and The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) Sign Licensing Agreement for COVID-19 Oral Antiviral Treatment Candidate to Expand Access in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Nov 17, 2021 | Access to Medicine, Coronavirus, News

[MPP Press Release] Pfizer and the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), a United Nations-backed public health organization working to increase access to life-saving medicines for low- and middle-income countries, today announced the signing of a voluntary license agreement for Pfizer’s COVID-19 oral antiviral treatment candidate PF-07321332, which is administered in combination with low dose ritonavir (PF-07321332; ritonavir). The agreement will enable MPP to facilitate additional production and distribution of the investigational antiviral, pending regulatory authorization or approval, by granting sub-licenses to qualified generic medicine manufacturers, with the goal of facilitating greater access to the global population.

Medicines Patent Pool signs first Covid-19 licence agreement with Merck Sharp & Dohme: Others must follow

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Oct 27, 2021 | Access to Medicine, Coronavirus, Licensing Protected Materials, News

[Medicines Law & Policy] The Medicines Patent Pool, a UN-backed organisation whose mission is to expand access to essential medicines around the world, today announced its first agreement on a Covid-19 therapy. The deal comes in the form of a licence and technology transfer agreement with Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) on molnupiravir, an investigational therapy for Covid-19 patients. The Medicines Patent Pool expanded its mandate to include Covid-19 technologies in March 2020.

WTO Extends Measures for LDCs to Access Knowledge, But Why not Go the Whole Way?

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Oct 22, 2021 | Coronavirus, Multilateral Fora, Trade Agreements, User Rights Network

[Teresa Hackett] When members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) recently agreed to extend the transition period by which Least Developed Countries (LDCs) must apply WTO rules on intellectual property, it was a welcome decision. However, it fell short of what LDCs had requested, and left open the wider issue of the need for special and differential treatment after a country graduates from LDC status, especially relevant given the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nigeria quietly, but surely, embracing balance, openness and flexibility in her copyright regime?

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Oct 18, 2021 | Domestic Legislation, Limitations and Exceptions

[Desmond Oriakhogba] Sometime in 2012, Nigeria began the process of reforming her over three-decade old copyright law. The extant Copyright Act was enacted in 1988, with some amendments in the early and late 90s. The reform process led to the production of a Draft Copyright Bill (DCB), which was open for comments sometime in 2015 by the Nigeria Copyright Commission (NCC), to repeal the extant Act and re-enact a new Act in Nigeria.

Joint Submission by 14 Scholars to the Government of Canada, re: Copyright, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet of Things

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Oct 12, 2021 | AI, Domestic Policies, Fair Use, Limitations and Exceptions, User Rights Network

This submission concerns the interaction between copyright and AI. The recommendations herein reflect the shared opinion of the intellectual property scholars who are signatories to this brief… In what follows, we explain: The importance of approaching the questions raised in the consultation with a firm commitment to maintaining the appropriate balance of rights and interests in Canada’s copyright system, consistent with a robust principle of technological neutrality; The importance of ensuring that text and data mining (TDM) activity can be undertaken in Canada without the threat of potential copyright liability. We therefore propose both an opening up of Canada’s fair dealing doctrine to better accommodate TDM activities, and the enactment of a specific statutory provision to confirm that uses of copyright works and other subject matter for TDM (whether commercial or non-commercial) do not infringe copyright; The importance of resisting calls to extend copyright protection to AI-generated outputs. We therefore propose maintaining and confirming the existing principled requirements of human authorship and original expression as preconditions of copyright protection, and we caution against any move to establish new neighbouring or sui generis rights in respect of AI outputs. Works generated by AI should remain in the public domain.

Innovation and Balance: Submission to the Government of Canada’s Consultation on Copyright, AI, and IoT

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Oct 3, 2021 | Academic Resources, AI

[Liwah Keller and Yuan Stevens] CIPPIC is a public interest clinic that specializes in technology law. Our goal is to advocate in the public interest for policy that promotes innovation, encourages respect for human rights, and responds to the needs of the wider public. These principles underlie the following recommendations that we offer in this submission: 1. Refrain from introducing laws that attribute authorship to AI or determine how authorship should be assigned for AI-assisted works until there is a clear and pressing need… 2. Develop a cohesive approach to liability for infringing activities that involve the use of an AI and provide an exception or safe harbour for text and data mining (“TDM”) within certain parameters… 3. Amend the prohibition on TPM circumvention to allow circumvention for uses that do not infringe upon copyright and expand the current exceptions to the prohibition.

Civil Society Letter to President Biden: TRIPS Waiver Must Apply to All Intellectual Property Rights, Not Just Patents

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Sep 27, 2021 | Blog

[Letter endorsed by 12 civil society groups] The Administration has displayed great leadership by announcing support for a TRIPs waiver and attempting to fashion an approach agreeable to all parties. As it continues these efforts, it should resist the temptation to narrow the scope of the waiver to exclude copyrights and other rights. Ambassador Tai’s May 5 announcement expressed support for waiving “intellectual property protections,” not just patent protections. We urge the Administration to remain steadfast in its advocacy for including all forms of intellectual property within the scope of the waiver.

Open Letter to Presidents of Latin America and the Caribbean: COVID-19 Vaccine Access

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Sep 27, 2021 | Access to Medicine, Coronavirus

[Civil society letter endorsed by 81 organizations and individuals] …Vaccine production has been insufficient to vaccinate the entire world population, therefore we consider that it is necessary to restructure the acquisition and production models to improve the availability of doses at the most favorable price for our region, which at the same time is going through a serious economic crisis. Therefore, it is imperative that pharmaceutical companies share technology and knowledge with other qualified producers as soon as possible and it is important that the countries of the region take a firm position towards the industry.

BLIND S.A. AND SECTION 27 CELEBRATE COURT ORDER DECLARING South Africa’s COPYRIGHT ACT UNCONSTITUTIONAL, AND ADVANCE TO CONSTITUTIONAL COURT FOR CONFIRMATION

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Sep 23, 2021 | Domestic Legislation, Domestic Policies, Limitations and Exceptions

BlindSA and SECTION27 welcome an order of the High Court of South Africa (Gauteng, Pretoria Division) declaring that the Copyright Act of 1978 is invalid for violating the rights of people who are blind or visually impaired. The case BlindSA v Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition (and others) was heard on the unopposed roll before Judge Mbongwe yesterday 21 September 2021, who made our draft order an order of the court. This is a massive victory for people who are blind or visually impaired, as well as learners with disabilities, who will now be able to access works under copyright in accessible formats more easily!

Call for Submissions: #IPWeek Workshop on Copyright and the Digital Economy

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Sep 17, 2021 | Events

InternetLab, Fundación Karisma, and the Ford Foundation would like to invite you to a workshop session on copyright and the digital economy held on October 28 and 29 as part of the 2021 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest’s #IPWEEK2021. In line with the Global Congress mandate of bridging research and advocacy, the workshop will provide participants with a forum to present materials for feedback and discussion, in a structured, dynamic format, with opportunities for publication in two different tracks. Deadline – October 14, 2021.

Case to #EndTheBookFamine to be heard 21 Sept 2021

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Sep 13, 2021 | Domestic Legislation, IP and Human Rights, Limitations and Exceptions, News Stories from Other Sources

[Section 27] BlindSA, represented by SECTION27, is going to court to fight for the rights of people who are blind or visually impaired by asking the court to amend the apartheid era Copyright Act for greater access to reading materials in accessible formats. The case will be heard in a virtual sitting of the High Court of South Africa (Gauteng Division) on 21 September 2021.

Applause as Australia Backs Covid Vaccine Patent Waiver

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Sep 9, 2021 | Access to Medicine, Coronavirus, Domestic Policies, Multilateral Fora, Trade Agreements

[Julia Conley] Vaccine equity advocates on Wednesday cheered as the Australian government bowed to a months-long pressure campaign demanding a suspension of intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines, after the country’s top trade official said he officially supports the push for a “people’s vaccine.” Trade Minister Dan Tehan told a group of advocates in a private meeting on Tuesday that the Australian government would support a trade-related aspects of intellectual property (TRIPS) waiver proposal, and later confirmed the news to the press.

EU Proposals regarding Article 31bis of the TRIPS Agreement in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Aug 23, 2021 | Access to Medicine, Coronavirus, Multilateral Fora, Trade Agreements

[Nirmalya Syam] This Policy Brief presents an analysis of the proposal by the European Union (EU) with regards to Article 31bis of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), as part of a Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health in the circumstances of a pandemic. It discusses the EU’s proposed clarifications, why Article31bis does not provide an effective solution to promote access to pharmaceutical products and possible options.

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