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

Special 301: U.S. Gov’t “Watch List” Threatens Access to Meds

[Public Citizen] Special 301 is an annual report by the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) which places countries on a “watch list” if USTR would like to see greater changes in their intellectual property rules or enforcement practice.The USTR articulates in past Special 301 Reports that “the United States respects a trading partner’s right to protect public health
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Lies, Distortions, and False Promise: The U.S. Position on Compulsory Licenses in the 2018 Special 301 Report

[Brook Baker] Once again the U.S. is unbelievably duplicitous in its 2018 Special 301 Report on permissible uses of compulsory and government use licenses by its trading partners, including most recently Colombia and Malaysia where it is announcing out-of-cycle reviews. On the one hand, the USTR pays lip service to the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health,
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Pharmaceutical Patent Grants in India: How Our Safeguards Against Evergreening Have Failed, and Why the System Must Be Reformed

[Feroz Ali, Sudarsan Rajagopal, Venkata S. Raman & Roshan John] This report identifies pharmaceutical drug patents granted in likely contravention of anti-evergreening provisions under section 3 of the Indian Patents Act, from a cohort of 2293 patents granted between 2009 and 2016. An estimate of the rate at which the Indian Patent Office (IPO) erroneously grants such patents, as well
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Update on South African Copyright Reform: Fair Use Provision May Be Removed

In the latest report from the South Africa copyright amendment bill process (see below), the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee suggested that it may be taking its fair use proposal off the table... notes from the most recent committee meeting conclude that the copyright exception provisions in the bill might be limited to “address the issues of hearing-impaired people, librarians and museum
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Statement from EU Academics on Proposed Press Publishers’ Right

[Sign-on letter from 169 European Scholars] We, the undersigned 169 scholars (of whom 100 are full professors) working in the fields of intellectual property, internet law, human rights law and journalism studies at universities all over Europe write to oppose the proposed press publishers’ right. Article 11 of the proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market,
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EU-Japan Trade Agreement’s Intellectual Property Chapter Limits Options for Reform

[Ante Wessels] The secretly negotiated EU-Japan trade agreement’s intellectual property (IP) chapter limits possibilities for copyright and patent reform. With the agreement, the EU exports part of its IP system. Local rules become binding international rules.
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