Category Empirical Research

The Decline of Online Piracy: How Markets – Not Enforcement – Drive Down Copyright Infringement

[João Quintais and Joost Poort] Abstract: This article... combines different sources and empirical methods, including consumer surveys among nearly 35.000 respondents and comparative legal research. Our main conclusion is that online piracy is declining. The key driver for this decline is the increasing availability of affordable legal content, rather than enforcement measures. Where the legal supply of copyright-protected content is affordable, convenient and diverse, consumers are willing to pay for it and abandon piracy.

Global Innovation Index 2019: India Makes Major Gains as Switzerland, Sweden, US, Netherlands, U.K. Top Ranking; Trade Protectionism Poses Risks for Future Innovation

[World Intellectual Property Organization] Now in its 12th edition, the GII is a global benchmark that helps policy makers better understand how to stimulate and measure innovative activity, a main driver of economic and social development. The GII 2019 ranks 129 economies based on 80 indicators, from traditional measurements like research and development investments and international patent and trademark applications to newer indicators including mobile-phone app creation and high-tech exports.

The Impact of Copyright Exceptions for Researchers on Scholarly Output

Abstract: High prices restrict access to academic journals and books that scholars rely upon to author new research. One possible solution is the expansion of copyright exceptions allowing unauthorized access to copyrighted works for researchers. I test the link between copyright exceptions for health and science researchers and their publishing output at the country-subject level. I find that scientists residing in countries that implement more robust research exceptions publish more papers and books in subsequent years. This relationship between copyright exceptions and publishing is stronger in lower-income countries, and stronger where there is stricter copyright protection of existing works.

New User Rights Data: Ranking Openness in 21 Countries

I had the honor of presenting the latest updates to our User Rights Database at the 18th annual Congress of the Society for Economic Research on Copyright Issues. I include here some new analysis of our data released for the first time at SERCI, ranking the countries in our study and categorizing them based on whether they have a civil or common law tradition.

Patents, Trade and Medicines: Past, Present and Future

[Kenneth Shadlen, Bhaven Sampat and Amy Kapczynski] Abstract ... We draw attention to the conceptual and methodological challenges of assessing the effects of patent provisions in trade agreements on prices and access to drugs, with particular emphasis on the importance of timing. Depending on when countries began allowing drugs to be patented, TRIPS-Plus provisions have different effects; and when pharmaceutical patenting has been in place for more countries for more time, the effects of TRIPS-Plus provisions will change again.

Product Patents and Access to Innovative Medicines in a Post TRIPS Era

[Jayashree Watal and Rong DAI] This paper examines access to new and innovative pharmaceuticals in a post-TRIPS era. The WTO’s TRIPS Agreement (TRIPS) makes it obligatory for WTO members – except least-developed country members (LDCs) - to provide pharmaceutical product patents with a 20-year protection term. Developing country members, other than LDCs, were meant to be compliant with this provision of TRIPS by 2005. Access to medicines generally includes two distinct components, viz. availability and affordability. This study investigates these two sub-components of access to medicines and poses two questions in this context: (1) How does the introduction of product patents in pharmaceuticals affect the likelihood of pharmaceutical firms making available new and innovative medicines in those markets? (2) For launched new and innovative medicines, how much do firms adjust their prices to local income levels in order to make these products affordable?

What happens when books enter the public domain? Testing copyright’s underuse hypothesis across Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada

[Rebecca Giblin] Abstract: The United States (‘US’) extended most copyright terms by 20 years in 1998, and has since exported that extension via ‘free trade’ agreements to countries including Australia and Canada. A key justification for the longer term was the claim that exclusive rights are necessary to encourage publishers to invest in making older works available — and that, unless such rights were granted, they would go underused. This study empirically tests this ‘underuse hypothesis’ by investigating the relative availability of ebooks to public libraries across Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada.

Scoping Study on Access to Copyright Protected Works by Persons With Disabilities

[Blake E. Reid and Caroline B. Ncube] Abstract: Many copyrighted works exist in formats inaccessible to individuals with disabilities. This inaccessibility is problematic, as many countries have passed laws that support equal societal participation for individuals with disabilities. Access to copyrighted content for individuals with disabilities generally requires some type of assistive technology that transforms some or all of the content of the work from one medium to another. However, these transformations can implicate the exclusive rights granted to copyright and related rights holders.

May 20: Webinar on the USMCA (NAFTA 2.0) and Access to Medicines

How will the recently-concluded United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) impact access to affordable medicines? The USMCA – the renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement (also commonly referred to as NAFTA 2.0) – incorporates many of the harmful provisions from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), including patent provisions that were suspended by the remaining Parties following the withdrawal of the US. It goes even further than the TPP in extending the exclusivities for biologics to ten years, an unprecedented TRIPS-plus measure. Beyond the intellectual property chapter, multiple other chapters and provisions of the USMCA also have implications for access to affordable, safe and effective medicines.

Digitization and the Demand for Physical Works: Evidence from the Google Books Project

[Abhishek Nagaraj and Imke Reimers] Abstract: The age of digitization promised to deliver a centralized, digital repository of all knowledge. Copyright holders, however, concerned about reduced demand for physical works, have blocked the realization of this vision. We investigate the effect of digitization on demand for physical works using novel data tracking the timing of the digitization of individual books from Harvard University’s libraries through the Google Books project.

Updated Study Finds Revenues from the New Creative Economy Grew 15% To $7 Billion In Just One Year

[Re:Create Coalition] Today the Re:Create Coalition released the second annual report on the economic value of the New Creative Economy, documenting that 16.9 million independent, American creators earned a baseline of $6.8 billion from posting their music, videos, art, crafts and other works online in 2017. Building upon last year’s study, the updated report found the number of new creators grew by 2.4 million (16.6%) and total revenues grew by 14.8%. Moreover, these results cover only nine leading online platforms for Americans participating in the New Creative Economy: Amazon Publishing, eBay, Etsy, Instagram, Shapeways, Tumblr, Twitch, WordPress and YouTube.

PROMOTING COPYRIGHT BALANCE IN A US-EU TRADE AGREEMENT

[Sean Flynn and Mike Palmedo] Comments to USTR - re: Negotiating Objectives for a U.S.-European Union Trade Agreement: PIJIP is managing a multidisciplinary research project on the impact of copyright user rights in the digital environment. One issue that the United States and the European Union face in their upcoming negotiations is the degree to which they should seek to include language promoting copyright balance through limitations and exceptions in the agreement. We make this statement to share information from our research indicating that the promotion of balanced copyright systems promotes U.S. trade interests. ... We also provide the results of research on existing language in trade and international law that promote balance in copyright laws and include some analysis of how such provisions could better meet U.S. interests.