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Report of SCCR/42 on Limitations and Exceptions and the African Group Work Plan Proposal

[Andrés Izquierdo] The last WIPO-SCCR/42 discussions focused on the African Group Work Plan proposal, the revised draft broadcasting treaty, and limitations and exceptions (L&Es) in favor of libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, research institutions, and people with disabilities. The primary SCCR outcomes on L&Es enclosed approval of two points of the African Group Work Plan proposal, including future presentations on cross-border copyright issues linked to online education and research practices, and developing toolkits supporting education, research, and preservation of cultural heritage.

Limitations and Exceptions in Second Revised Draft Text of the Broadcast Treaty

The 43rd meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organization Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights will consider a Second Revised Draft Text for the WIPO Broadcasting Organizations Treaty (“Second Revised Draft”). A question that is likely to be posed is whether the text contains sufficient consensus to move toward a diplomatic conference. Considerable questions have been raised about the need for and scope of rights in an anti-piracy treaty that would ultimately cover content of signals that are already protected by other copyright and related rights treaties, for example by KEI and Professor Bern Hugenholtz. This note focuses on the limitations and exceptions provisions of the Second Revised Draft. For comments embedded in a redlined version of the Draft showing changes from the version presented in SCCR 42, see PIJIP’s redlined version of the Second Revised Draft.