Papers

Papers

  • Joined: March 4, 2014
  • Articles: 346

Creative Markets and Copyright in the Fourth Industrial Era: Reconfiguring the Public Benefit for a Digital Trade Economy

[Ruth Okediji] Abstract:  A rapid succession of technological advances – big data, robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence – is steadily changing how firms engage in productive activity, how consumers interact, and how knowledge goods are acquired, shared, and governed. The rise of big data and the increasingly widespread adoption of artificial intelligence across many industries have complicated our understanding of the values of twentieth-century intellectual property rules. If anything, the expected social costs (such as privacy) of new technology have already intensified debates – both global and national in scope – about the nature of rules that best foster innovation, facilitate access to public goods, and enable economic development.

Behind the Scenes of Online Copyright Enforcement: Empirical Evidence on Notice & Takedown

[Sharon Bar-Ziv and Niva Elkin-Koren] Abstract: Copyright enforcement was one of the early challenges to the rule of law on the internet and has shaped its development since the early 1990s. The Notice and Takedown (N&TD) regime, enacted in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, offered online intermediaries immunity from liability in exchange for removing allegedly infringing materials upon receiving notice from rights holders. The unequivocal power of rights holders to request removal and the strong incentives for online intermediaries to remove content upon receiving a removal request have turned the N&TD regime into a robust clean-up mechanism for removing any unwarranted content. The N&TD procedure applies to private facilities, makes use of proprietary software, and is administered by private companies. This enforcement procedure is nontransparent and lacks sufficient legal or public oversight. Unlike copyright enforcement in court, where decisions are made public, we know very little about the actual implementation of the N&TD regime: Which players make use of the system? Who is targeted? What materials get removed and why? How effective is the removal of infringing materials, and does it comply with copyright law?

Copyright User Rights and Remedies: An Access to Justice Perspective

[Pascale Chapdelaine] Abstract: In contemporary copyright law, there is an ongoing debate around the nature and scope of the rights users should have to copyright works, exacerbated by ongoing technological developments. Within that debate, this article queries the value of looking at the remedies users may have against copyright holders restricting their legitimate uses of works, as a means to further elucidate the nature and scope of user rights. While there is some value in looking at remedies to situate copyright user rights, an access to justice perspective to rights and remedies suggests that such approach may be too limiting with respect to the position of potential claimants in a legal system.

Intellectual Property and Digital Trade in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data

CEIPI/ICTSD Publications Series, Issue 5: This new issue ... edited by Xavier Seuba, Christophe Geiger and Julien Pénin, elaborates on changes in modes of innovation, production and commercialisation of innovation, which are central in current discussions and relate closely to intellectual property law and competition. The chapters of this volume feed the debate, identify the central aspects and may be instrumental at drafting a research agenda.

Permitted Uses in Copyright Law – Is There Need for an International Instrument?

[Reto Hilty and Valentina Moscon] Abstract: As a follow-up project to the “Declaration on a Balanced Interpretation of the Three-Step Test” (2008), the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition has coordinated an international group of world-renowned copyright experts to produce a legal instrument (possibly in the form of an international agreement) containing a nucleus of indispensable copyright-permitted uses that States should be obliged to implement in their legislations. With the purpose of counterbalancing the current international trend in copyright law, characterised by its “minimal protection approach”, concrete provisions and extended explanatory notes are provided to foster a “minimal limitation approach”.

From Lab to Commons: Shifting to a Public Interest Biomedical System

[Sophie Bloemen and David Hammerstein] ... a commons approach in biomedical research & development (R&D) can help pull us out of the current crisis of over-diagnosis, over-prescription, low innovation, secrecy and sky-rocketing costs for both patients and health systems. While not exhaustive in our analysis of the many factors affecting biomedical innovation and public health, we propose entry points in the form of policies with the power to transition society away from the current proprietary, centralised and extractive model. In a second step, we put forward a vision for future initiatives in line with commons principles, where the EU should be investing for long-term benefit.

Projected Savings Through Public Health Voluntary Licences of HIV Drugs Negotiated By The Medicines Patent Pool

[Sandeep Juneja, Aastha Gupta, Suerie Moon, and Stephen Resch] Abstract: ... While robust data on the savings generated by MPP and other major global public health initiatives is important, it is also difficult to quantify. In this study, we estimate the savings generated by licences negotiated by the MPP for ARV medicines to treat HIV/AIDS in LMICs for the period 2010–2028 and generate a cost-benefit ratio–based on people living with HIV (PLHIVs) in any new countries which gain access to an ARV due to MPP licences and the price differential between originator’s tiered price and generics price, within the period where that ARV is patented.

Internet Shutdown Stories

[CIS-India] Aside from the waves of innovation that the digital revolution brought with it, the ever increasing pervasiveness of the internet has had a tremendous impact on empowerment and freedoms in society. We are seeing unprecedented levels of access to information, along with ademocratization of the means of creation, production and dissemination of information to anyone with an internet connection. ... Simultaneously, however, we are seeing Indian states discover and experiment with their power to clamp down on these new modes of communication for a variety of reasons, ranging from the ill-intentioned to the ill-informed. ...This book seeks to give a glimpse into the lives of those directly affected by these internet shutdown experiments. From Jammu and Kashmir to Telangana, from Gujarat to Nagaland, we have collected 30 stories from across the country for an up-close look at how the everyday lives of common citizens have been impacted by internet shutdowns and website blocks.

Judicially Developed Patent Law and Expropriation Under Investor-State Dispute Settlement

[Tsai-fang Chen] Abstract: Eli Lilly v. Canada is the first international investment arbitration case that renders final award that deals with patents under the international investment regime. This case is, therefore, critical in understanding the development of protecting patents under investment protection and its impact on the domestic patent regimes. Patents can be object of direct expropriation or that of indirect expropriation. As demonstrated in Eli Lilly v. Canada, a new frontier in claiming expropriation of patents is the invalidation of the patent by courts.

“This Video is Unavailable”: Analyzing Copyright Takedown of User-Generated Content on YouTube

[Kristofer Erickson and Martin Kretschmer] Abstract: What factors lead a copyright owner to request removal of potentially infringing user-generated content? So-called “notice-and-takedown” measures are provided in the United States under Section 512 of the U.S. Copyright Act (as amended by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998) and enabled in the European Union under the Directive on Electronic Commerce (2000/31/EC). While the combination of limiting liability (“safe harbor”) and notice-and-takedown procedures was originally conceived as a means of balancing innovation with the interests of rightholders, there has been limited empirical study regarding their effects. This research investigates, for the first time, the factors that motivate takedown of user-generated content by copyright owners.

Patent Policy and American Innovation after eBay: An Empirical Examination

[Filippo Mezzanotti and Timothy Simcoe] Abstract: The 2006 Supreme Court ruling in eBay vs. MercExchange marked a sea change in U.S. patent policy. The eBay decision removed the presumption of injunctive relief. Subsequent legal and policy changes reduced the costs of challenging patent validity and narrowed the scope of patentable subject matter. Proponents of these changes argue that they have made the U.S. patent system more equitable, particularly for sectors such as information technology, where patent ownership is fragmented and innovation highly cumulative. Opponents suggest the same reforms have weakened intellectual property rights and curtailed innovation. After reviewing the legal background and relevant economic theory, we examine patenting, R&D spending, venture capital investment and productivity growth in the wake of the eBay decision. Overall, we find no evidence that changes in patent policy have harmed the American innovation system.