[International Federation of Library Associations)] After years of IFLA engagement at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), discussions have reached a key moment. In three regional seminars, many countries asked for international action – a key priority for IFLA. A global conference will take place in October 2019 to make decisions on the way forward.
International IP instruments are usually developed “bottom up”, which is to say that they build upon and harmonize those existing national regimes that are regarded as successful and representative of widespread practice. At least when they are first adopted, international IP instruments are often not too detailed and prescriptive, leaving policy space for national implementation. The negotiations so far in the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (the WIPO IGC), are more “top down” than “bottom up”, at least on traditional knowledge (TK) and traditional cultural expressions (TCEs). This is because national regimes are relatively recent and few in number, and experiences with them so far are inconclusive. The “top down” nature of the IGC may be one of the reasons that its progress has been slow so far.
The last in a series of World Intellectual Property Organization regional seminars on copyright limitations and exceptions concluded with broad agreement that exceptions in Latin America are inadequate to cater to the needs of education and research in the digital world, including through the work of libraries, archives and museums, according to participants. But complaints continued from beneficiary communities that the discussion in the seminars was steered away from the topic of how international law could help remedy the problems identified.
[Esteban Burrone et. al.] In 2016, the Lancet Commission on Essential Medicines Policies, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other stakeholders called for the patent pool to expand its mandate to a broader range of patented essential medicines.[5,6] Here, we outline the findings of a released feasibility study on expanding the patent pool’s mandate,[7] laying out the public health case for adapting its model to disease areas beyond the initial three focus diseases. In May 2018, the patent pool acted on the results of the feasibility study and expanded its mandate to include other patented essential medicines.
Access to medicines and vaccines is one of the fundamental elements for the full realization of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and the correspondent objectives of universal health coverage and health for all without discrimination, with special attention to reaching those furthest behind first
[Nirmalya Syam] In 2007 Member States of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) unanimously adopted a set of 45 recommendations which constitute the WIPO Development Agenda. Developing countries sought to give new direction to WIPO through the Development Agenda, away from the pursuit of facilitating and strengthening protection, acquisition and enforcement of intellectual property (IP) rights as an end in itself towards an approach that would be sensitive to the impact of IP on development, both in terms of opportunities as well as costs.
The World Intellectual Property Organization, a United Nations agency, has come under fire from a range of regional and global groups representing key public interest components of the copyright system for unfairly catering to rights holder interests in an ongoing series of regional meetings, resulting in sharply biased outcomes of the meetings. The groups say they were excluded from participating on equal footing with other stakeholders, giving days of extra time to others to lobby officials from national and regional copyright offices. This provides support for the notion that WIPO and the copyright system are pursuing a mission to protect copyright holders, they argue, ignoring other creators, the public interest, and exceptions and limitations.
[Education International] Education International welcomes UNESCO global commitment to advancing access to works for teaching and learning through expanding access to quality and locally relevant open educational resources.
[Third World Network] Member states participating in the 72nd World Health Assembly (WHA) renewed their commitment to end tuberculosis (TB) while expressing serious concerns about drug-resistant TB (DR-TB), the treatment of which is presently costly and beyond the reach of many national TB programmes… Bedaquiline and delamanid are extensively patented in countries with a high TB burden such as China, India, Indonesia etc, blocking entry of generic competition and more affordable sources of the treatment. Members states and civil society interventions during the WHA reflected the challenges they face in this regard
[Cable Green] On May 28, 2019, UNESCO member state representatives took an important step for open education by adopting the 2019 UNESCO OER Recommendation, providing unanimous approval to bring it to the next General Assembly. UNESCO has a strong history in open education, having coined the term OER in 2002, passed the 2012 Paris OER Declaration, and co-hosted (with Slovenia) the 2017 OER Global Congress.
The WIPO Secretariat held a briefing on its plans for regional seminars on limitations and exceptions to copyright for Libraries,
Archives, Museums and Educational & Research Institutions, on April 3. Sylvie Forbin chaired the meeting and led the description of WIPO’s plans.
[Teresa Nobre, for the Communia Association] We believe that there is a minimum set of access and use rights that should be defined by public rules, since they are justified by public interests. If copyright laws do not grant to the education and research communities, the cultural heritage institutions, and the persons with disabilities the same level of protection that is granted to rightsholders, and defer to private agreements the regulation of all uses of copyrighted materials, they perpetuate an unbalanced power structure and let rightsholders weaken or undermine what should be a public policy decision.