Organizations representing libraries and archives filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in Allen v. Cooper, a case concerning the constitutionality of a statute that seeks to limit the sovereign immunity of state governments against claims for copyright infringement. The amicus brief focuses on the negative impact the elimination of sovereign immunity would have on digital preservation.
[Dana Brown] Executive Summary: ... Public ownership in pharmaceutical R&D would ensure that more intellectual property related to drug development would be held by public institutions and utilized in the public interest. Right now, a small number of newer medications are responsible for the majority of pharmaceutical spending by public programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Ensuring that new drug development is done in the public interest assures that not only do we get the medications that we need for the most pressing public health concerns (rather than the most profitable health issues), but also that those medications come at an accessible price.
... Since the mid-2000s, China has taken an innovative turn that has serious ramifications for the global pharmaceutical landscape and future issues lying at the intersection of intellectual property and public health. To be sure, many policymakers and commentators still focus unduly on the problems in the Chinese intellectual property system. Notable recent examples include the Trump administration's Section 301 reports and the United States' second complaint against China for violating the WTO TRIPS Agreement. Nevertheless, it is time that policymakers and commentators paid greater attention to the changing Chinese pharmaceutical landscape and its many ramifications.
[Argyri Panezi] Abstract: Libraries have traditionally played a central role in collecting and organizing material and giving wide access to culture and knowledge. Does the existing copyright framework provide enough space for online digital libraries to claim an equivalent central role in the online space? This article explores the legal challenges for online digital libraries’ collection building.
[SPARC press release] Today, SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) submitted a detailed filing to the U.S. Department of Justice urging federal antitrust enforcers to block the proposed merger between college textbook publishing giants Cengage and McGraw-Hill Education. The merger would create the largest publisher of college course materials in the United States and the world’s second largest education publisher overall.
[Joint statement endorsed by 28 civil society groups and 53 individuals] Policymakers have expressed concern about both harmful online speech and the content moderation practices of tech companies. Section 230, enacted as part of the bipartisan Communications Decency Act of 1996, says that Internet services, or “intermediaries,” are not liable for illegal third-party content except with respect to intellectual property, federal criminal prosecutions, communications privacy (ECPA), and sex trafficking (FOSTA). Of course, Internet services remain responsible for content they themselves create.
[Bram Van Wiele] Abstract: The rise of digital photography and videography has made the creation, sharing and commercialisation of high-quality photographs and videos more accessible, in terms of both cost and skills required. This thematic report examines the impact on copyright infringement of the increase in photographs and videos containing public art. It then analyses the applicability, for such photographs and videos, of the general exceptions for protection of artistic works in South Africa’s Copyright Act 98 of 1978.
Readers in Europe and around the world may have heard some refreshingly contented murmurings recently about a new—and, “miraculously, an eminently sensible”—copyright policy report coming out of Canada. The report of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science & Technology, released earlier this month, was the culmination of a statutorily mandated parliamentary review of Canada’s Copyright Act, commenced five years after the coming into force of the Copyright Modernization Act 2012.
In December 2017, the government launched its copyright review with a Parliamentary motion to send the review to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. After months of study and hundreds of witnesses and briefs, the committee released the authoritative review with 36 recommendations that include expanding fair dealing, a rejection of a site blocking system, and a rejection of proposals to exclude education from fair dealing where a licence is otherwise available. The report represents a near-total repudiation of the one-sided Canadian Heritage report that was tasked with studying remuneration models to assist the actual copyright review. While virtually all stakeholders will find aspects they agree or disagree with, that is the hallmark of a more balanced approach to copyright reform.
[Christophe Geiger and Elena Izyumenko] Abstract: It is often claimed that an open-ended provision for copyright limitations such as the US fair use clause would be unfit for civil law countries because of their author-centered traditions of copyright law and their traditional skepticism towards “judge made law” encouraged by open norms. However, the rising application in those countries of fundamental rights by the judiciary to solve copyright cases (mainly based on freedom of expression and information) and the balancing of interests it requires resemble in many aspects the practice of common law jurisdictions and the weighing of factors typically done in the context of a fair use analysis.
Schools and universities are shifting to the use of digital resources - including to online E-reserves, E-Books and other forms of digital distribution. Collective (blanket) licensing, which for years has charged schools for making analogue reproductions of excerpts of printed works for use in printed course packs has declined in value and usefulness as education invests in digital licensing that offers enhanced access and reproduction rights. To facilitate the shift that benefits all stakeholders, legal rules must reflect emerging practices in which blanket licences compete in the market with alternative licensing models. One answer, represented by Canada, is a mix of broader copyright exceptions for the use of excerpts for educational purposes combined with a shift in educational spending toward buying and licensing more digital works and digital uses of works.
[Fix the Patent Laws] Today, Fix the Patent Laws is launching a report of findings from an analysis of tuberculosis research and development (R&D) underway in South Africa. The analysis was conducted to gain greater insight into the TB innovation landscape in South Africa, the role of public financing in driving and supporting innovation, as well as expectations of public returns (I.e. affordable, user friendly health technologies) from R&D efforts and expenditure, and strategies employed to promote public returns. The analysis also sought to gain greater insight into opportunities and challenges to employing alternative innovation models in South Africa that do not result in access inhibiting patent monopolies.