[Public Citizen Press Release] The U.S. Food and Drug Administration should promptly release all research data supporting Gilead Sciences’ request for emergency use of remdesivir for treatment of patients hospitalized with the coronavirus infection (COVID-19), Public Citizen said today in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the agency.
[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.
[Krishna Ravi Srinivas] Abstract: The HIV/AIDS crisis showed that the traditional IP rules and models of innovation do not assure affordable access. This resulted in some changes in IP rules and the recognition that IP and trade rules should not become major constraints for affordable access. The current crisis provides an opportunity to revisit and learn from the earlier one. This calls for a rethink of role of IP and its use as an incentive. The Business As Usual approach will not work. The current crisis should be seen as an opportunity to review and rethink and to give new models and approaches a chance.
[Electronic Information for Libraries] On the occasion of World Intellectual Property Day 2020, EIFL worked with leading global cultural heritage organizations in drafting an open letter calling on the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to take urgent action to help save our cultural heritage. The theme of World IP Day 2020 is ‘Innovate for a Green Future’. This is a welcome goal, but we must not forget the threat to the world's cultural heritage posed by the disastrous effects of climate change, and aggravated by the lack of appropriate copyright legislation supporting the institutions that preserve our common knowledge and heritage.
[Public Citizen] Open science, ramped-up manufacturing, fair pricing and sharing of technology, among other actions, are urgently needed to reduce loss of life during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, 254 groups including Public Citizen said today. The groups released a list of principles calling for action from governments, international agencies, manufacturers, donors and development partners.
[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.
With the number of people afflicted with COVID-19 surging past 1 million, thousands dying of COVID-19 every day, and the situation likely to worsen in the coming months, an international coalition of legal experts, engineers and scientists are calling on companies, universities and other organizations to make their intellectual property (IP) temporarily available free of charge for use in ending the COVID-19 pandemic and minimizing the impact of the disease.
...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.
We write to you as organisations and individuals representing researchers, educators, students, and the institutions that support them, to encourage WIPO to take a clear stand in favour of ensuring that intellectual property regimes are a support, and not a hindrance, to efforts to tackle both the Coronavirus outbreak and its consequences. The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a bright light on how important intellectual property limitations and exceptions can be to development and human flourishing. Researchers discovered the spread of the virus through a text and data mining project analyzing copyrighted news articles, enabled by Canada’s flexible fair dealing right for research purposes. The earliest potential treatments have been developed through existing medicines, enabled by experimental use exceptions to patent rights.
[Interview by Victoria Heath and Brigitte Vézina]...When time is of the essence, like now with the COVID-19 pandemic, scientific research results must be made available as soon as possible so that other scientists, policymakers and the general population can rely on sound scientific data in their decision-making process. Contrary to the traditional publishing model, which puts scientific publications behind a paywall or puts a 6 to 12-month embargo on self-archiving (depositing scholarly research in an online repository or open archive), open access allows for immediate, worldwide access to scientific and scholarly publications.
[Laura DeNardis and Jennifer Daskal] ... While the online world is often portrayed as a societal ill, this pandemic is a reminder of how much the digital world has to offer. The pandemic also lays bare the many vulnerabilities created by society’s dependence on the internet. These include the dangerous consequences of censorship, the constantly morphing spread of disinformation, supply chain vulnerabilities and the risks of weak cybersecurity.
[Paul G. West, Derek Moore, Klaus Beiter and J.A.K. Olivier] Hereto our urgent request for the signing of the Copyright Amendment Bill, as was passed by both Houses and sent to your Office for assent after it was approved on 28 March 2019. We wish to specifically address the significance of the proposed amendments to the South African Copyright Act for access to learning materials in schools and higher education institutions in South Africa. The proposed “fair use” provision and specific exceptions for additional educational uses are not only compatible with international copyright law (the Berne Convention, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), and so on). They also pass the three-step test of international copyright law, as understood by the majority of international copyright law scholars.