Day September 21, 2022

South African Constitutional Court Reads Disability Exceptions Into Copyright

[Sean Flynn] In a huge court victory that may assist human rights and IP advocacy, the SA Constitutional Court released a quite remarkable judgment today that “reads in” the copyright amendment bill’s disability provisions into the current law because of the long delay in passing the bill. The Court finds that the lack of disability exceptions in current law violates the equality right of people with disabilities. It also finds a violation of free expression rights that uses reasoning with broader import.

Rewarding Failure with Patents

[Robin Feldman] Abstract: It is axiomatic that patents promote success. And yet, a contrary notion—that the patent incentive for medicine should be sufficient to compensate for the losses incurred when research fails—is quietly permeating modern court decisions, commentary, and Congressional discussions, coloring debates relating to pricing and regulation of medicine. The conceptualization is moving forward unchallenged, as if failure compensation follows logically from the innovation incentives built into the patent construct. As this article demonstrates, however, the notion is antithetical to patent law, putting modern conceptualizations on a collision course with the history and theory of patents reaching back to this nation’s inception.