InfoJustice Eds.

InfoJustice Eds.

  • Joined: July 15, 2019
  • Articles: 284

The 73rd World Health Assembly and Resolution on COVID-19: Quest of Global Solidarity for Equitable Access to Health Products

[Nirmalya Syam, Mirza Alas and Vitor Ido] Abstract: The annual meeting of the World Health Assembly (WHA) of the World Health Organization (WHO) held virtually on 18-19 May 2020 discussed the global response to COVID-19 and adopted Resolution WHA73.1 on “COVID-19 Response”... Though the Resolution makes a commitment of ensuring access to medical products, vaccines and equipment for all countries in a timely manner, there are no concrete actions defined. In order to ensure global equitable access, WHO Members should make full use of the flexibilities of the Agreement on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and also enhance transparency of costs of research and development (R&D), openness and sharing of data, tools and technologies, and build more capacity through technology transfer.

Our DSM Implementation Tracker Is Out

[Teresa Nobre] Today we are launching our new DSM Directive Implementation Tracker. These tracking pages aim to provide information on the status of the implementation of the new Copyright Directive in all EU Member States. The information contained in each country page was collected by local organisations and individuals in each country and/or from public sources. This tracker is part of a wider implementation project of COMMUNIA and its members Centrum Cyfrowe and Wikimedia, which includes a range of activities (including our DSM Directive Implementation Guidelines) to make sure that local communities in as many Member States as possible are aware of their national legislative processes and participate in those processes.

EIFL COMMENTS ON KENYA’S IP BILL

[Electronic Information for Libraries] EIFL has provided comments to the Kenya Copyright Board (KECOBO) on the draft Intellectual Property Bill, 2020, which aims to consolidate existing laws relating to intellectual property. The draft Bill also proposes mandating the development of a national strategy and policy on intellectual property, a potentially useful means of framing copyright within national priority areas such as literacy and education, digital inclusion, research and innovation. A national strategy also provides the opportunity to highlight the place of libraries in national information infrastructures that help deliver on government policies, and the need for copyright laws to support library activities and services in pursuit of these public interest objectives.

A COALITION OF STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS LAUNCH ADVOCACY TRACKER TOOL OF PUBLIC FUNDS FOR COVID-19 AT KEY UNIVERSITIES

[Universities Allied for Essential Medicine Europe] Today, May 18th, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), in collaboration with multiple American medical student organizations, has launched an interactive mapping tool that highlights key research universities and institutions that are receiving taxpayer money to develop novel diagnostics, therapeutics, and/or vaccines for COVID-19. The tool powerfully demonstrates the indispensable role of universities, public research institutions and public funding in the development of novel medical technologies. By visualizing where public funding is being directed, this tool contributes to transparency regarding the current significant levels of public investment and aims to hold research universities and institutions accountable to their social responsibilities to the public by ensuring any resulting technologies will be affordable and accessible to all.

New policy paper on fundamental rights as a limit to copyright during emergencies

[Teresa Nobre] Today, Communia released a policy paper on fundamental rights as a limit to copyright during emergencies. This policy paper has been prepared in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused a massive disruption of the normal organization of society in many EU countries. In our paper we defend that, in order to transpose education, research and other public interest activities from public locations to private homes during government-imposed lockdowns, we need to be able to rely on the understanding that fundamental rights can, in exceptional situations, function as an external limit to our national copyright systems.

Open letter to the EU Ambassador to South Africa on copyright laws

[Association for Progressive Communications and International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions] ... stakeholders across South Africa have being waiting for many years for the update of the country’s copyright laws. With the last reform having taken place 40 years ago, there is a pressing need to bring laws into the digital age, as well as to address the significant problems around the governance of rightholder organisations set out by the Farlam Commission. The resulting bill achieves many of these goals.

World leaders unite in call for a people’s vaccine against COVID-19

[UNAIDS Press Release] More than 140 world leaders and experts, including the President of South Africa and Chair of the African Union, Cyril Ramaphosa, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, the President of the Republic of Senegal, Macky Sall and the President of the Republic of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo have signed an open letter calling on all governments to unite behind a people’s vaccine against COVID-19. The call was made just days before health ministers meet virtually for the World Health Assembly on 18 May. The letter, which marks the most ambitious position yet set out by world leaders on a COVID-19 vaccine, demands that all vaccines, treatments and tests be patent-free, mass produced, distributed fairly and made available to all people, in all countries, free of charge.

New Leadership at WIPO

[Teresa Hackett] In May 2020, member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) appointed Mr Daren Tang to WIPO’s top job in Geneva. As leader of WIPO, the global body that sets international law and policy on intellectual property issues, the new Director General takes charge of an organization whose direction on copyright determines how libraries do their work, especially in the digital environment. In this blog, Teresa Hackett, EIFL Copyright and Libraries Programme manager introduces the new Director General and sets out hopes for libraries under his leadership. EIFL has congratulated Tang on his appointment.

Research Data Alliance COVID-19 Guidelines and Recommendations

[EIFL] The Research Data Alliance (RDA) COVID-19 Working Group has released draft guidelines and recommendations for sharing research data in ways that support scientific research and policy making during public health emergencies. The group is calling for feedback on the draft guidelines. Feedback will inform the Working Group’s discussions and be incorporated into the next version of the guidelines and recommendations. You can post your feedback here. The deadline is 24 May.

Does WIPO’s New Leadership Have the Vision to Shake Up Global Copyright Policy-Making?

[Brigitte Vézina] This change in leadership opens the way for bold new perspectives and a sharpened focus on much needed global copyright policy reform that has been urged for decades. With Tang at the helm, WIPO and its member states will have a unique opportunity to recalibrate an outdated, unbalanced copyright system, embrace on equal terms the views and opinions of civil society organizations, and create a new order where rules are fit for the digital environment in which we all learn, create, and share.

South Centre Letter to WTO, WHO, and WIPO on Covid-19 and the TRIPS Art. 73 Exception for “Essential Security Interests”

...Access to affordable medicines, vaccines and diagnostics and to medical equipment, and to the technologies to produce them, is indispensable to treat COVID-19. Such technologies should be broadly available to manufacture and supply what is needed to address the disease... In this connection, I wish to recall that in accordance to the ‘Security Exceptions’ contained in Article 73(b) of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement), any World Trade Organization Member can take “any action which it considers necessary for the protection of its essential security interests”. The use of this exception will be fully justified to procure medical products and devices or to use the technologies to manufacture them as necessary to address the current health emergency.