Category Industry Initiatives

The Changing Academic Publishing Industry: Implications for Academic Institutions

[Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition] Academic publishing is undergoing a major transition as some of its leaders are moving from a content-provision to a data analytics business. This is evidenced by a change in the product mix that they are selling across higher education institutions, which is expanding beyond journals and textbooks to include research assessment systems, productivity tools, online learning management systems – complex infrastructure that is critical to conducting the end-to-end business of the university... Data about students, faculty, research outputs, institutional productivity, and more has, potentially, enormous competitive value. It represents a potential multi-billion-dollar market (perhaps multi-trillion, when the value of intellectual property is factored in), but its capture and use could significantly reduce institutions’ and scholars’ rights to their data and related intellectual property.

Global Innovation Index 2018: China Breaks Into Top 20, US Drops Out Of Top 5

[David Branigan, IP-Watch]  The 11th edition of the Global Innovation Index 2018 (GII), co-published by Cornell University, INSEAD, and the World Intellectual Property Organization, was released yesterday at a launch event in New York. This year’s report showed Switzerland still at the top overall, China continuing to rise, the United States slipping, and explored how countries can vary on inputs and outputs of innovation. “The GII ranks 126 economies based on 80 indicators, ranging from intellectual property filing rates to mobile-application creation, education spending and scientific and technical publications,” according to a WIPO press release.

Portugal: “Voluntary” Agreement Against Copyright Infringements

[Maryant Fernández Pérez, EDRi, Link (CC-BY)] On 30 July 2015, copyright and related rights-holders associations, the General Inspection of Cultural Activities (IGAC), the Portuguese Consumer Directorate-General, the Portuguese Association of Telecom Operators, the organisation responsible for .pt domain registrations DNS.PT,…

Inconvenient Truths About Foreign Online Pharmacies

I wrote an op ed for The Hill ‘Congress Blog’ about the continuation of  a PhRMA-funded effort to prevent access by consumers to lower cost international online pharmacies.  They seem to have a new eye for extending criminal penalties for…

GIPC IP Index: Propagating Imaginary IP norms

[Swaraj Paul Barooah.  Cross-posted from Spicy IP, Link] One would expect that the US Chamber of Commerce would have enough funds to commission a thorough and well researched report whenever they were to do so. Yet, their GIPC IP Index 2014 is…

Pharmagate and the Economics of Patent Law Reform

[Marcus Low, Treatment Action Campaign, Link (CC-BY-SA)] We are deeply perturbed by revelations in last Friday’s Mail & Guardian exposing what appears to be a very well-funded, covert plot by foreign pharmaceutical companies and their local subsidiaries to delay a…