Category Academic Resources

Addressing Exclusivity Issues During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond

[Michael S. Sinha, Sven Bostyn, and Timo Minssen] Abstract: ... This chapter addresses exclusivity issues, with a particular emphasis on regulatory exclusivities for vaccines and therapeutics. We begin with a basic overview of the current regulatory exclusivity landscape in Europe and the US, followed by a discussion of current developments in COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics. Next, we describe the influence of these technological developments on debates surrounding regulatory exclusivities while describing their relationship to other forms of exclusivities. From these assessments, we draw some lessons for market exclusivity, innovation, and access during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

The Proposed TRIPS Waiver and Pharmaceutical Industry’s Concerns about Counterfeit COVID-19 Vaccines

[Muhammad Zaheer Abbas] Submission to the Australian Parliament’s Joint Committee on Law Enforcement Inquiry into Vaccine Related Fraud and Security Risks - Executive Summary: Australia needs to support the proposal of temporarily waiving intellectual property protections to scale up production and supply of vaccines and other COVID-19 related treatments and diagnostics. The Brand-name pharmaceutical industry’s claim that the proposed TRIPS waiver will result in the proliferation of counterfeit vaccines and treatments is not supported by empirical evidence.

Interfaces and Interoperability After Google v. Oracle

[Mark A. Lemley and Pamela Samuelson] Abstract: We address an important issue the Supreme Court left unaddressed this spring in its blockbuster Google v. Oracle decision: are computer interfaces copyrightable at all? We argue that they aren’t, and that the Federal Circuit's decision to the contrary is an aberration that should not undermine a quarter century of consensus on the importance of interoperability and open APIs. In our view, denying copyright protection for APIs and encouraging interoperability is important not only for innovation in the software world but for restoring competition to a technology industry dominated by a few incumbent firms.

New Book – Intellectual Property Law and Access to Medicines: TRIPS Agreement, Health and Pharmaceuticals

[Srividhya Ragavan] Amaka Vanni and I are pleased to share our new book, Intellectual Property Law and Access to Medicines: TRIPS Agreement, Health, and Pharmaceuticals. The book maps 25 years of TRIPS from the perspective of access to medication discourse by looking at  three generations of access to medication debate.

Now available: Open educational resource of Building Legal Literacies for Text Data Mining

[Timothy Vollmer] Last summer we hosted the Building Legal Literacies for Text Data Mining (LLTDM) institute... the participants and project team reconvened in February 2021 to discuss how participants had been thinking about, performing, or supporting TDM in their home institutions and projects with the law and policy literacies in mind. To maximize the reach and impact of Building LLTDM, we have now published a comprehensive open educational resource (OER) of the contents of the institute. The OER covers copyright (both U.S. and international law), technological protection measures, privacy, and ethical considerations.

The Corruption of Copyright and Returning It to Its Original Purposes

[Michelle M. Wu] undermined both of those interests, redirecting the benefits of copyright towards themselves instead of the intended beneficiaries. This paper looks at the book, music, and entertainment industries, examines how copyright has been used to suppress the uses it was intended to foster, and explores ongoing and proposed avenues for course correction.

Text and Data Mining Exception in South America: A Way to Foster AI Development in the Region

[Matías Jackson Bertón] Abstract: In 2015, authors wondered if Europe was falling behind in the artificial intelligence (AI) race because of the lack of a text and data mining (TDM) exception. What can then be said for South America? Copyright regimes and their interaction with the development of digital technologies in this continent have been overlooked by authors. This paper intends to start filling this gap by mapping the current state of copyright exceptions that serve computational analysis in South America. After reviewing the copyright regimes of the five largest economies of the region (i.e. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru), I concluded that they are not prepared for digital research techniques such as text and data mining.

The Effect of Patent Disclosure Quality on Innovation

[Travis Dyer, Stephen Glaeser, Mark H. Lang and Caroline Sprecher] Abstract: The patent system grants inventors temporary monopoly rights in exchange for a public disclosure detailing their innovation. These disclosures are meant to allow others to recreate and build on the patented innovation. We examine how the quality of these disclosures affects follow-on innovation. We use the plausibly exogenous assignment to patent applications of patent examiners who differ in their enforcement of disclosure requirements as a source of variation in disclosure quality. We find that some examiners are significantly more lenient with respect to patent disclosure quality requirements, and that patents granted by these examiners include significantly lower-quality disclosures. These patents generate significantly less follow-on innovation.

An Endless Odyssey? Content Moderation Without General Content Monitoring Obligations

[Christina Angelopoulos and Martin Senftleben] Abstract: In line with the E-Commerce Directive and the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, the proposed Digital Services Act provides explicitly that intermediaries may not be obliged to monitor their service in a general manner in order to detect and prevent the illegal activity of their users. However, a misunderstanding of the difference between monitoring specific content and monitoring FOR specific content is a recurrent theme in the debate on intermediary liability and a central driver of the controversy surrounding it. Rightly understood, a prohibited general monitoring obligation arises whenever content – no matter how specifically it is defined – must be identified among the totality of the content on a platform. The moment platform content must be screened in its entirety, the monitoring obligation acquires an excessive, general nature.

Public Lies and Public Goods: Ten Lessons From When Patents and Pandemics Meet

[Peter Drahos] Abstract: The paper examines three decades of the history of patents and pandemics that begins with the HIV/AIDS pandemic and TRIPS. This history demonstrates that the patent system is itself a huge source of risk when it comes to managing the risks of pandemics. From this history ten core lessons are extracted. The central message of the paper is that developing countries will have to focus on collaborations among themselves with the aim of building a wide base of rich manufacturing experience in the production of medicines and therapies. They can expect no priority of treatment under the present patent-mediated response to pandemics.

Save the Date – Global Congress #IPWeek2021 – October 25-29

[Fundación Karisma] The organizers of the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest will host an #IPWeek October 25-29, 2021. A call-for-proposals will be open soon, and in this edition, we will include a call for creative pieces about the intellectual property / public interest relationship in a post-pandemic world.

Who is terminating their copyrights? New research and open access datasets from the Author’s Interest Project

[Joshua Yuvaraj] ...This research examines Copyright Office records created each time someone files a notice of termination under §§ 203 or 304 of the Copyright Act. Those sections grant authors and their heirs inalienable rights to end copyright grants and reclaim their rights 35 years after transfer. They were designed to give authors a ‘second bite’ of the cherry, giving some redress in situations like that involving the co-creators of Superman (who sold their rights for just $130 in 1938). We constructed new open access datasets that contain all the termination notices we could locate in the catalog. Our research also analyses who is filing such notices and for what types of work, and how publishers, record companies, and other intermediaries respond when notices are filed against them.