InfoJustice Eds.

InfoJustice Eds.

  • Joined: July 15, 2019
  • Articles: 288

Communia Supports the WTO TRIPS Waiver for COVID-19

[Teresa Nobre] Today, Communia and a group of over 100 organisations and more than 150 individuals issued a statement calling for the World Trade Organization (WTO) to temporarily suspend its rules on intellectual property where needed to support the prevention, containment and treatment of COVID-19. This diverse group representing researchers, educators, students, information users, and the institutions that support them, urges all WTO Members to endorse the TRIPS waiver proposal presented by India and South Africa, including provisions that address “the copyright barriers to the prevention, containment and treatment of COVID-19”.

Vaccine nationalism and crisis profiteering: Unions take action

[Education International] Just 10 countries, some of the richest in the world, have administered 75% of vaccinations. Meanwhile, around 130 countries that account for 2.5 billion people have not administered a single dose. This is not an issue on which we can afford to be passive. The only solution to a global pandemic is global solidarity,” stated David Edwards, Education International General Secretary, opening EI’s webinar on vaccine equity...Education International and its member organisations fully support the TRIPS waiver proposal and will continue to push, at both national and international levels, for equitable access to lifesaving vaccines and medical products. Click here for more information on the TRIPS waiver proposal. Click here for more.

Ensuring the Visibility and Accessibility of European Creative Content on the World Market: The Need for Copyright Data Improvement in the Light of New Technologies

[Martin Senftleben, Thomas Margoni, Daniel Antal, Balázs Bodó, Stef van Gompel, Christian Handke, Martin Kretschmer, Joost Poort, João Quintais and Sebastian Felix Schwemer] Abstract: In the European Strategy for Data, the European Commission highlighted the EU’s ambition to acquire a leading role in the data economy. At the same time, the Commission conceded that the EU would have to increase its pools of quality data available for use and re-use. In the creative industries, this need for enhanced data quality and interoperability is particularly strong. Without data improvement, unprecedented opportunities for monetising the wide variety of EU creative and making this content available for new technologies, such as artificial intelligence training systems, will most probably be lost.

Yes, export bans on vaccines are a problem, but why is the supply of vaccines so limited in the first place?

[Deborah Gleeson] ...Much of the reporting on vaccine nationalism tends to focus on the hoarding of vaccines by particular countries. But we should question why the supply of vaccines is so limited in the first place. This comes down to privately held monopolies on the intellectual property and other types of knowledge, data and information needed for making vaccines. While there is manufacturing capacity available globally to ramp up vaccine production, the exclusive rights to make and sell the vaccines are held by a small number of companies. This is despite a huge investment of public funding in the development of many vaccines.

Update on Publisher’s Copyright Infringement Suit Against Sci-Hub and LibGen in India

[Anubha Sinha] This blog post is an update on the copyright infringement suit filed against Sci-Hub and LibGen in the Delhi High Court by Elsevier Ltd, Wiley India, and American Chemical Society... Indian science and academia realise that their right to research is at stake. In January, several Indian scientists and advocacy organisations applied to intervene in the case, to persuade the court to not issue an interim or permanent injunction for dynamic blocking of the websites.

Creation is Not a Closed Book Exam: Developing the Best Practices in Fair Use for Open Educational Resources

[Will Cross and Meredith Jacob] You can learn a lot from which questions people ask you, and which they don’t. As educators and advocates for building openly-licensed textbooks and other open educational resources (OER), we spend a lot of our time at conferences and workshops talking about how to understand and use Creative Commons licenses. As we’ve done presentations over the past few years, however, we noticed that attendees generally listened politely to our presentation and then spent the entire question and discussion period asking pointed questions about how fair use fits in.

Declaration from Members of the European Parliament to urge the Commission and Member States not to block the TRIPS waiver at the WTO and to support global access to COVID-19 vaccines

[Joint statement by 100 MEPs] We, Members of the European Parliament, urge the European Commission and the European Council to review their opposition to the TRIPS waiver proposal at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which serves to enable greater access to affordable COVID-19 health technologies, including vaccines, in particular for developing and middle income countries. This call comes in view of the European Council meeting of 25 February 2021 and the crucial decision to be made by all Member States at the WTO General Council on 1-2 March 2021.

Hundreds of Prominent US Civil Society Organizations Call on Pres. Biden to Stop Blocking COVID-19 WTO Waiver to Boost Vaccines, Treatments Worldwide

[Public Citizen] Today, U.S. consumer, faith, health, labor, human rights, development and other civil society groups urged the White House to support an emergency COVID-19 waiver of World Trade Organization (WTO) intellectual property rules, so that greater supplies of vaccines, treatments, and diagnostic tests can be produced in as many places as possible as quickly as possible. The pandemic cannot be stopped anywhere unless vaccines, tests, and treatments are available everywhere, so variants that evade current vaccines do not develop. At a press conference joined by Reps. Rosa DeLauro, (D-Conn.), Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), U.S. civil society leaders released a letter signed by hundreds of prominent U.S. organizations calling on the Biden administration to join more than 100 nations in support of the waiver. The Trump administration led a handful of countries opposed to the waiver at the WTO. At two recent WTO committee meetings, the new administration has not reversed the Trump era obstruction of the waiver.

Fair Use Jurisprudence 2019–2021

[Jack Lerner, Luke Hartman, and Jordin Wilcher] We are excited to celebrate Fair Use Week with a new report from the UC Irvine School of Law’s Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology (IPAT) Clinic: Fair Use Jurisprudence 2019–2021: A Comprehensive Review... At the UCI Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinic, we work with independent filmmakers to make sure that when they do need to make fair use, they can do so responsibly, appropriately, and safely. Over the past couple of years, our Filmmaker Counseling team began to hear of a rising number of fair use opinions coming out of the federal courts, and we decided to embark on an exhaustive study of recent fair use decisions in copyright infringement cases. In total, we identified and analyzed seventy-two opinions issued by federal courts and made available on Westlaw or Lexis between January 1, 2019, and February 25, 2021. In our report, we provide abstracts of 72 opinions along with some commentary on selected cases.

EIFL CALLS ON WTO TO SUPPORT LDC REQUEST

[Electronic Information for Libraries] EIFL has called on the World Trade Organization (WTO) to grant a request by Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to extend the LDC TRIPS exemption for as long as a country remains an LDC. Article 66.1 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) grants Least Developed Countries (LDCs) an exemption from implementing the substantive obligations for protection and enforcement of IP rights, including copyright... It shields LDCs from having to adopt higher standards of copyright protection, provides policy space to craft copyright exceptions, such as for libraries and education, to support national priorities on education, literacy, research and innovation, and it avoids costly obligations with regard to the establishment of new criminal procedures, border controls, and other enforcement measures.

CASE Act: Good or Bad News for Filmmakers?

[AU Center for Media and Social Impact] In December, the CASE Act (for Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement) was quietly slipped into must-pass legislation. Pushed heavily by large copyright holders and batted down by copyright-flexibility advocates for years, it is now law. It could affect how creators of all kinds, including filmmakers, experience the employment of fair use in practice.

On Feb. 5, the Center for Media & Social Impact in conjunction with its partners—University Film and Video Association’s Documentary Working Group, D-Word, International Documentary Association, Dallas Videofest, and AU’s School of Communication, hosted a webinar, “What Does the CASE Act Mean for Filmmakers and Fair Use?” The recorded livestream of the webinar is available on the School of Communication’s YouTube channel.