Advocating for a world where intellectual
property law serves the public interest.
USTR Backtracks on Commitments with Intellectual Property & Investor-State Dispute Settlement Clause
Last week I expressed my shock in seeing that the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement proposes to expand (or at least clarify) the ability of corporations to challenge intellectual property limitations and exceptions in so called investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) tribunals. One source of that surprise came from my recollection of repeated meetings with USTR negotiators […]
Author: Mark Lemley Abstract: The traditional justification for intellectual property (IP) rights has been utilitarian. We grant exclusive rights because we think the world will be a better place as a result. But what evidence we have doesn’t fully justify IP rights in their current strong form. Rather than following the evidence and questioning strong […]
Authors: Paul David Harpur and Nicolas Suzor Abstract: This article argues that governments around the world need to take immediate coordinated action to reverse the ‘book famine’. There are over 129 million book titles in the world, but persons with print disabilities can obtain less than 7 per cent of these titles in formats that […]
Last week, the Lisbon Council and Innovation Economics published The 2015 Intellectual Property and Economic Growth Index: Measuring the Impact of Exceptions and Limitations in Copyright on Growth, Jobs and Prosperity. The report by Benjamin Gibert examines limitations and exceptions to copyright in eight OECD countries, and then describes economic growth at the overall and […]
In a recent white paper, Geoffrey Manne and Julian Morris argue that fair use is a “dangerous exception” that should not be “exported” to our trade partners through trade agreements the way other aspects of US copyright law (such as our lengthy term and protection for digital rights management) have been spread for years. Their […]
I released a statement earlier today opining that the today’s leak of the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) chapter proposed for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement (available at https://wikileaks.org/tpp-investment/WikiLeaks-TPP-Investment-Chapter.pdf) would give new rights to private companies to challenge limitations and exceptions to copyrights, patents, and other intellectual property rights in unaccountable international arbitration forums. […]
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