Day September 3, 2019

USTR Seeks Comments For Annual Report on Foreign Trade Barriers

The U.S. Trade Representative has called for comments for the National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers (NTE). The report, published each year "sets out an inventory of the most significant foreign barriers affecting U.S. exports of goods and services, including agricultural commodities, U.S. intellectual property, U.S. foreign direct investment by U.S. persons, especially if such investment has implications for trade in goods or services, and U.S. electronic commerce."

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.

Are Fair Use Provisions in the SA Copyright Amendment Bill Far Broader than in the US?

Opponents of the South African Copyright Amendment Bill claim that the fair use provisions in Section 12 of the Bill far exceed those of the U.S. They state that if the Bill is signed by the President, it will be the only country in the world with such extensive rights for users. They warn, as part of their ongoing media campaigns and at seminars, that this will be ‘extremely catastrophic’ for authors and publishers in South Africa, and that foreign investors will no longer invest in the creative industries in South Africa. This is an exaggeration and fear-mongering at its best.

China’s Innovative Turn and the Changing Pharmaceutical Landscape

... 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.

Intellectual Property Norm-Building: Some Reflections on the Interplay between the National and International Dimensions

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.