Advocating for a world where intellectual
property law serves the public interest.

12 South African Civil Society Groups Demonstrate for COPyright Reform on UN International Human Rights Day

On December 10, International Human Rights Day, twelve South African civil society groups called on the government to modernize its copyright law. The groups led a march from the Department of Trade and Industry to the Union Buildings and delivered a memorandum demanding the passage of copyright reform to protect vital rights.

WIPO’s missed opportunity to produce guidance on copyright exceptions hits education during pandemic

[Education International] A legal instrument on copyright exceptions for the use of materials for teaching, learning, research, and the work of cultural heritage organisations is still not available. According to Education International, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) missed an opportunity at its recent Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) to show leadership on this issue.

USTR to Announce 2021 Special 301 Review

The U.S Trade Representative will announce the 2021 Special 301 Review tomorrow. This is the annual review required by the Trade Act which identifies countries that “deny adequate and effective protection of intellectual property (IP) rights or deny fair and equitable market access to U.S. persons who rely on IP protection.” The review is based partially on comments received from

One product, many patents: Imperfect intellectual property rights in the pharmaceutical industry

[Charu N. Gupta] Abstract: Economists’ standard notion of intellectual property rights considers a single patent per product, with a clearly defined scope, certain enforcement, and a fixed term of monopoly protection. Yet common across industries are “imperfect” intellectual property rights: More than one patent may cover a single product, with the scope and enforcement of each uncertain, contributing to an

Urgently waive intellectual property rules for vaccine

[Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch] Governments should stop blocking a temporary waiver of some global intellectual property rules that will help boost global access to COVID-19 vaccines, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said today ahead of a key World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Geneva on December 10, 2020. If adopted, the waiver proposal would enable more governments

Can scholarly pirate libraries bridge the knowledge access gap? An empirical study on the structural conditions of book piracy in global and European academia.

[Balázs Bodó, Dániel Antal, and Zoltán Puha] Abstract: Library Genesis is one of the oldest and largest illegal scholarly book collections online. Without the authorization of copyright holders, this shadow library hosts and makes more than 2 million scholarly publications, monographs, and textbooks available. This paper analyzes a set of weblogs of one of the Library Genesis mirrors, provided to