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

EIFL’s Review of ‘Fairness’ in Partner Countries’ Copyright Laws

[Teresa Hackett] In celebration of Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, EIFL has surveyed copyright laws in partner countries that reflect the concept of ‘fairness’ in the use of copyright protected material. Language on the fairness of permitted uses for purposes such as education, research, criticism or review can be found in the laws of over half of EIFL’s partner countries across
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Intellectual Property Use in Middle Income Countries: The Case of Chile

Authors: Carsten Fink, Bronwyn Hall and Christian Helmers. Abstract: We analyze the use of intellectual property (IP) by firms in Chile over the decade 1995-2005 as the then middle-income country experienced rapid economic growth of 4.7 percent per year. We use a novel dataset that contains a combination of detailed firm-level information from the annual manufacturing census, information on firms’
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Comments to the Mexican Senate on Copyright Provisions in the NAFTA Renegotiation

I am here to speak about the importance of including provisions in NAFTA to protect the abilities of countries to have general and open public interest copyright exceptions. All three countries have such exceptions to varying degree. And all three are under threat from the agenda of some copyright holders in international forums.
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Debunking the Fair Use vs. Fair Dealing Myth: Have We Had Fair Use All Along?

[Ariel Katz] According to conventional wisdom, a fundamental difference exists between the American fair use doctrine and the Canadian (or Commonwealth) fair dealing doctrine: while American fair use can apply potentially to any purpose, Canadian fair dealing could only apply to those purposes enumerated in the statute. Accordingly, fair dealing cannot apply to dealings for other purposes even if they
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The Second Circuit’s Fair and Balanced Fair Use Decision in Fox News v. TVEyes

[Originally posted on the CCIA's DisCo Blog, Link] This week is Fair Use Week, so at first blush, the Second Circuit’s decision that TVEyes’s service was not a fair use might appear ironic. However, a closer read reveals that the decision does not in any way undermine the Second Circuit’s recent fair use jurisprudence. As DisCo has previously covered, TVEyes
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“Free Trade” Agreements Would Be More Fair With Fair Use At Their Core

... Copyright and other intellectual property rights will continue to be included in bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations, such as in the continuation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (now renamed “CPTPP” to stand for Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership), the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the talks on the Mercosur-EU trade agreement. A common
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