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The WIPO Files II: Is International Lawmaking on Copyright Still Possible?

[Teresa Nobre] The 42nd session of the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) took place from 9 to 13 May 2022 in Geneva. This was the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic started that most of the delegates were reunited in person. In 2020 and 2021, the Committee held hybrid format sessions of online and in-person participation, with most of the delegations attending remotely. The number of meetings were reduced from two regular sessions to one per year as a result and the Committee agreed not to engage in text-based negotiations during those sessions. The return to Geneva could have led one to believe that there might be a renewed interest in moving the Committee’s agenda forward. But as the days passed by, without a consensus on any agenda item, this hope faded away. Only when the session was coming to an end did the delegates finally agree on a few next steps for the two main agenda items of the Committee, in both cases falling short of the initial expectations.

Civil Society’s Meaningful Engagement in the Patent System for a More Profound Real-World Impact

[Muhammad Zaheer Abbas] Abstract: The current COVID-19 pandemic has put the problem of equitable access to health technologies in the limelight because governments across the globe are struggling to meet the health needs of their populations. Patent exclusivities add to the cost of healthcare by allowing supra-competitive prices of protected technologies. There is a pressing need to mobilize all means and resources to promote price-reducing generic competition. Civil society organizations can make an enormous difference by successfully opposing questionable patents. Patent opposition is an administrative safeguard which procedurally enables community organizations to play this crucial role as defenders of the public interest. This paper supports the adoption of the patent opposition procedural safeguard as it provides civil society organizations with an affordable and practically feasible mechanism to challenge validity of questionable patents.

Libraries, Research Get a Boost at WIPO

[Terea Hackett] The 42nd session of WIPO's Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), the global forum that sets international copyright law and policy, took place in Geneva from 9 - 13 May 2022 - the first full meeting since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. EIFL was there to promote strong rights for libraries in support of access to knowledge for education, research and development. I was representing EIFL with Dick Kawooya, University of South Carolina, USA; Anthony Kakooza, Makerere University, Uganda; Desmond Oriakhogba, University of Venda, South Africa, and Awa Cissé Diouf, Universite Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD), Senegal.