Day July 16, 2021

Defending Access to Medicines in Regional Trade Agreements: Lessons From the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership – A Qualitative Study of Policy Actors’ Views

[Belinda Townsend] ...The RCEP negotiations were initially framed as focused on the needs of low income countries. Public health concerns emerged however when draft negotiating chapters were leaked online, revealing pressures on countries to agree to intellectual property and investment measures that could exacerbate issues of access to medicines and seeds, and protecting regulatory space for public health. A concerted Asia Pacific civil society campaign emerged in response to these concerns, and in 2019, media and government reporting suggested that several of these measures had been taken off the table, which was subsequently confirmed in the release of the signed text in November 2020.

Notes from the WIPO Standing Committee on COpyright and Related Rights

[Anubha Sinha] Day 1 - Member states delivered opening statements and deliberated on the progress, substantive provisions, and method of work on the draft broadcasting treaty text. This blog post summarises positions and contentions that supported: 1) transparency in SCCR work 2) limitations and exceptions 3) addressing the object of protection and overbroad scope of rights in the draft treaty text.

WIPO Agrees to Hold Information Session on COVID

[Electronic Information for Libraries] WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR/41) has just held its first - and only - meeting in 2021. EIFL was represented by Teresa Hackett, EIFL Copyright and Libraries Programme Manager, Dick Kawooya, University of South Carolina, and EIFL Copyright Coordinator in Senegal, Awa Cissé, Universite Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD), Dakar...EIFL called for action on two agenda items: fair access to broadcast content in the proposed treaty for the protection of broadcast organizations, and for work to begin on exceptions for preservation and other priority areas. We also urged extreme caution on starting any work on the controversial issue of public lending right. In the main concrete outcome of the session, the Committee decided to hold an information session on the impact of the COVID pandemic on the cultural, creative and educational ecosystem during SCCR/42, which is due to take place in 2022.