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

Submission to Nigerian Copyright Office: Consultation on Copyright Amendment Bill

[Sean Flynn and Dick Kawooya] We are grateful for the opportunity to participate in Nigeria’s consultation on its copyright bill. Below, we present some of our research findings from PIJIP’s Project on the Right to Research in International Copyright relating to the importance of flexibility in copyright law to permit text and data mining (“TDM”). TDM is a critical element

Innovation and Balance: Submission to the Government of Canada’s Consultation on Copyright, AI, and IoT

[Liwah Keller and Yuan Stevens] CIPPIC is a public interest clinic that specializes in technology law. Our goal is to advocate in the public interest for policy that promotes innovation, encourages respect for human rights, and responds to the needs of the wider public. These principles underlie the following recommendations that we offer in this submission: 1. Refrain from introducing

Civil Society Letter to President Biden: TRIPS Waiver Must Apply to All Intellectual Property Rights, Not Just Patents

[Letter endorsed by 12 civil society groups] The Administration has displayed great leadership by announcing support for a TRIPs waiver and attempting to fashion an approach agreeable to all parties. As it continues these efforts, it should resist the temptation to narrow the scope of the waiver to exclude copyrights and other rights. Ambassador Tai’s May 5 announcement expressed support

Strong Intellectual Property Protection, Weak Competition Rules – or the Other Way Around to Accelerate Technology Transfer to the Global South?

[Klaus Beiter] Competition law provisions relating to intellectual property (IP) rights should play an enhanced role in facilitating the domestic and international transfer and dissemination of technology. IP-related competition rules in the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) create an obligation for Member States to apply competition law in the IP context. TRIPS

Open Letter to Presidents of Latin America and the Caribbean: COVID-19 Vaccine Access

[Civil society letter endorsed by 81 organizations and individuals] ...Vaccine production has been insufficient to vaccinate the entire world population, therefore we consider that it is necessary to restructure the acquisition and production models to improve the availability of doses at the most favorable price for our region, which at the same time is going through a serious economic crisis.

Introducing the Copyright Anxiety Scale

[Amanda Wakaruk, Céline Gareau-Brennan and Matthew Pietrosanu] Abstract: Navigating copyright issues can be frustrating to the point of causing anxiety, potentially discouraging or inhibiting legitimate uses of copyright-protected materials. A lack of data about the extent and impact of these phenomena, known as copyright anxiety and copyright chill, respectively, motivated the authors to create the Copyright Anxiety Scale (CAS). This