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

Ensuring Indigenous Participation at WIPO: GRULAC Proposal at PBC/38

By Andres Izquierdo, Counsel, PIJIP, American University At the 38th session of WIPO’s Program and Budget Committee (PBC), the Delegation of Colombia, speaking on behalf of the Group of Latin American and Caribbean Countries (GRULAC), introduced a proposal to address the ongoing funding crisis that threatens the participation of Indigenous Peoples in WIPO’s norm-setting processes. […]

Fair Use Isn’t Optional: Judges Can Help Reclaim It for Creators

By Yuanxiao Xu. This post was originally published on Authors Alliance. “One need not be a copyright scholar to evaluate fair use. One need only understand the purpose of copyright. — Leval wins my heart forever” Brandon Butler’s drawing of Judge Leval. CC BY 4.0. If you have spent much time exploring U.S. copyright law, you’d likely have encountered […]

Malaysia-EFTA Economic Partnership Agreement (MEEPA) Would Tie Malaysia’s Hands on Access to Medicines

Brook K. Baker, Prof. Emeritus, Northeastern U. School of Law, Senior Policy Analyst, Health GAP The MEEPA is a tentatively concluded trade agreement between Malaysia and EFTA (the European Free Trade Association of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland) that may soon be signed by the Malaysian government. Malaysian negotiators have accepted intellectual property (IP) protections […]

WIPO-IGC 51st Sessions Breaks Jinx, Recommends Mandate Renewal

by Chidi Oguamanam* First Published by ABS Canada here. Republished on Infojustice with the permission of the author. Delegates to the World Intellectual Property Organization Special Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expressions (WIPO-IGC) resumed and concluded their last deliberations for the 2024-2025 biennium on May 30-June 5. Most […]

The NOODL license: Licensing African datasets to support research and AI in the Global South

With the increasing prominence of AI in all sectors of our economy and society, access to training data has become an important topic for practitioners and policy makers. In the Global North, a small number of large corporations with deep pockets have gained a head start in AI development, using training data from all over […]

The Great Flip: Can Opt-Outs be a Permitted Exception? Part II

Lokesh Vyas and Yogesh Badwal This post was originally published on Spicy IP. In the previous part, we examined whether the opt-out mechanism, as claimed in Gen-AI litigations, constitutes a prohibited formality for the “enjoyment and exercise” of authors’ rights under Article 5(2) of the Berne Convention. And we argued no. In this post, we address the second question: Can […]