infoJustice

[International Federation of Library Associations] Following a call for comments by the government of New Zealand Te Aotearoa on draft legislation designed to implement the Marrakesh Treaty, IFLA has made a submission. This highlights the need to reject provisions that go beyond what the Treaty requires, and to respect the fundamental principle of non-discrimination.

[Daniel P. Gross] This paper studies the effects of the USPTO's patent secrecy program in World War II, under which approximately 11,200 U.S. patent applications were issued secrecy orders which halted examination and prohibited inventors from disclosing their inventions or filing in foreign countries in the interests of national security. Secrecy orders were issued most heavily in areas important to

[Teresa Nobre] In the age of connectivity, it is not enough to fight for better copyright laws for users in certain regions of the world. We need to advocate for baseline international standards that allow cross-border uses of copyrighted materials, for purposes such as access to knowledge and education, in each and every country of the world. That is why

Singapore recently released its long awaited report on copyright reform. As expected, the report proposes to eliminate the fifth factor of its fair use test – which requires examination of whether a license is available for the activity in question. The proposed reforms go much further, echoing many of the policies and approaches of South Africa’s Copyright Amendment Bill in

[David Branigan] Open access advocates in the United States are celebrating the expiration, and non-renewal, of the Copyright Term Extension Act, which introduces into the public domain all works from 1923, and signals an end of the practice by US lawmakers to continually extend the terms of copyright protection. Leading figures from groups such as Creative Commons and Wikimedia Foundation