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

The Impracticality of Relying on Compulsory Licenses to Expand Production Capacity for COVID-19 Vaccines

[Brook Baker] The complications and limitations of compulsory-license-reliant measures to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic need to be better explained. The European Union and several other countries espousing reliance on TRIPS-compliant compulsory licenses to overcome patent barriers have opposed the India/South Africa temporary intellectual property (IP) waiver proposal on COVID-19 health technologies at the World Trade Organization. Although compulsory licenses
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Disinformation, Diversion, and Delay: The Real Text of the European Union’s Communication to the WTO TRIPS Council – Urgent Trade Policy Responses to the COVID-19 Crisis

[Brook Baker] If the European Union’s Communication to the TRIPS Council – Urgent Policy Responses to the COVID-19 Crisis has no real substance, then it is fair to conclude that its true purpose is disinformation, diversion, and delay. The Communication purports to address clarifications needed to make existing TRIPS flexibilities more operational for countries that might need to issue compulsory
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A closer look at the final Commission guidance on the application of Article 17

[Communia Assocaition] Today, on the verge of the implementation deadline for the CDSM directive, the European Commission has published its long awaited guidance on the application of Article 17 of the Directive, in the form of a Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council. The structure of the final guidance largely follows the outline of the
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Reconceptualising Copyright Markets: Disseminative Competition as a Key Functional Dimension

[Cheryl Foong] Abstract: The notion of ‘markets’ occupies a prominent yet ambiguous position in copyright discourse. When the term is raised, the copyright owner’s market tends to be taken as its implicit meaning, perpetuating an assumption that the market needs to be protected solely to preserve incentives to create. This dominant narrative overshadows an important dimension of copyright markets –
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The COVID-19 Pandemic and Trade-Related Security Exceptions: An Analysis of the Flexibility under International Law

[Muhammad Zaheer Abbas] The COVID-19 pandemic has raised serious concerns about affordable and equitable access to the needed health technologies. The patent-based pricing model of health technologies further exacerbates these concerns. This paper critically evaluates Article 73(b) of the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (WTO TRIPS Agreement) to answer the key question: whether this
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If a Machine Could Talk, We Would Not Understand It: Canadian Innovation and the Copyright Act’s TPM Interoperability Framework

[Anthony Rosborough] Abstract: This analysis examines the legal implications of technological protection measures (“TPMs”) under Canada’s Copyright Act. Through embedded computing systems and proprietary interfaces, TPMs are being used by original equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”) of agricultural equipment to preclude reverse engineering and follow-on innovation. This has anti-competitive effects on Canada’s “shortline” agricultural equipment industry, which produces add-on or peripheral equipment
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