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

Intellectual Property Institute Statement on the 42nd WIPO SCCR

[Intellectual Property Institute] The first half of the event focused on the Broadcasting Treaty proposal, which SCCR first discussed more than 15 years ago. The proposal would grant new exclusive rights to broadcasting organisations, but falls short on granting the necessary exceptions and limitations in public interest. NGOs such as Communia and EIFL have harshly criticised the proposal in that

Inequitable by Design: The Law and Politics of Global COVID-19 Vaccine Access – And a Way Out

[Ximena Benavides] Abstract: ...This Article analyzes the power dynamics of vaccine manufacturing and distribution of U.S. pharmaceutical companies in the context of global COVID 19 vaccination. Drawing on the health-justice and law-and-political-economy scholarship of the last decade, this Article demonstrates how a “patent culture” shaped by intellectual property law fundamentally neglects health-equity principles as it politicizes healthcare access. These contemporary

WHO and MPP Announce Agreement with NIH for COVID-19 Health Technologies

[Medicines Patent Pool] WHO’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) and the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) today finalised a licensing agreement with the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the development of several innovative therapeutics, early-stage vaccines and diagnostic tools for COVID-19. The licences, which are transparent, global and non-exclusive, will allow manufacturers from around the world to work

PIJIP Statement at the 42nd Session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights

The Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property provides the following comments and information related to the agenda items being considered at the 42nd session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights. The comment includes sections on 1. our new study on research exceptions in comparative copyright, 2. limitations and exceptions in the broadcast treaty, and 3.

From Berne Convention History: Germany’s Stand on Copyright Limitations & Exceptions for Scientific and Educational Purposes

[Lokesh Vyas] During the initial meetings of the Berne Convention, Germany was very vocal about the rights of users and even proposed a separate right to use copyrighted works for education and scientific purposes without author’s consent. This proposal came through a questionnaire proposed by Germany on September 9th, 1884 meeting of the Convention wherein it used the term reciprocal

Research Exceptions in Comparative Copyright

[Sean Flynn, Luca Schirru, Michael Palmedo, and Andrés Izquierdo] Abstract: This Article categorizes the world’s copyright laws according to the degree to which they provide exceptions to copyright exclusivity for research uses. We classify countries based on the degree to which they have a research exception in their law that is sufficiently open to be able to permit reproduction and