Category: Top Stories

Call for Contributors

Got an article idea? Interested in intellectual property and copyright? WIPO Monitor is seeking article contributors and would like to see academics, researchers, industry professionals and students all represented in our pages. WIPO Monitor especially welcomes submissions from Countries of the South and developing country representatives; from indigenous peoples; from educational, research organization, library, archives and museum communities; and from communities of people with disabilities. WIPO Monitor currently focuses on several WIPO committees: the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), the WIPO Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP), the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC), and the WIPO General Assembly.  It welcomes submissions and updates from activities in any of these forums, as well as related submissions.

WIPO Monitor is a project supervised by the Network Communications Governance Lab at McMaster University. Through this site, we seek to research and monitor developments in international copyright policy, as well as provide a an informative, critical, and comprehensive venue for readers to discover and keep themselves up-to-date in the affairs of the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Some of the most pressing questions in international IP today include its growing role in developing countries and indigenous communities, and in educational, research, library, archival, and museum organizations.  We ask how the international system might seek to become more responsive to the needs of developing nations, people with disabilities, and educational, research, library, archival, and museum organizations. We feel it is important that these discussions about the future directions of international intellectual property take place in within a context of informed analysis. We also believe that it is paramount that awareness of these discussions be raised among all relevant stakeholders, and not merely among industry professionals.

Our goal is to feature practical articles and reviews on WIPO’s agenda and frequent meetings. Our readers seek to more effectively understand the various topics and discussions happening behind WIPO’s doors. While we are interested in a wide variety of IP issues, we tend to focus on copyright provisions, access to knowledge, traditional knowledge and sustainable development.

 

If you wish to contribute, please contact Sara Bannerman, Associate Professor at McMaster University, at sara.bannerman[at]gmail.com.

Universalizing fair use: An important Argentinian proposal

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Photo: WIPO – Emmanuel Berrod.

The government of Argentina has submitted an important proposal in current negotiations towards an international instrument on limitations and exceptions to copyright at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Most international treaties seek to establish minimum standards. In the case of the current WIPO negotiations, relating to exceptions and limitations to copyright for education and research institutions and persons with disabilities, this means that all countries would agree to permit a minimum set of things, such as permitting photocopying for classroom use or reproduction for classroom display.

As the Argentinian government notes, this often does not go far enough, especially in the online context, since countries invariably differ widely in their implementation of such minimum standards, and digital transactions often involve multiple country jurisdictions.

Many everyday actions done in the context of educational institutions potentially involve multiple jurisdictions, and could be legal in one jurisdiction but not in the other:

  • playing an Internet video from a web site based in one country in the classroom of another;
  • uses of works in distance education, where students may be based in a different country from the instructor;
  • downloading works from a web site in another country for educational purposes;
  • making available or sending articles, texts, or digital course packs from one country to another.

Understanding the legality of any of these actions, along with many others, currently involves expensive legal analysis of the copyright regimes of multiple countries–an untenable situation for educational institutions, as the Argentinian government notes.

Argentina therefore proposes that “within the scope of a treaty on limitations and exceptions, lawful conduct in one territory should not be illegal in another. If reproduction or making available is valid under the treaty, it cannot then be invalid under the rules of another State jurisdiction.” (p. 4). The exact wording of the proposal is as follows:
Where performed in accordance with the exceptions and limitations set forth in this agreement, the reproduction or making available of a work shall be governed by the law of the country in which the reproduction or making available occur, without precluding the reproduced work from being delivered to or used by a person or institution benefitting from exceptions and limitations located in another Member State, provided that such delivery or use is consistent with the terms and conditions set forth in this agreement. (p. 4).
The Argentinian government has proposed a solution worthy of serious discussion at the WIPO meeting to be held next week.

[Original post available here]

Does IP have a role in sustainable development? Of course it does!

Does intellectual property have a role in sustainable development? Of course it does! But the World Intellectual Property Organization, a UN agency, seems uncertain as to whether it has a role to play in implementing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

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Photo: WIPO – Emmanuel Berrod.

As I note in a draft book chapter, WIPO’s preliminary analysis of the ways in which its work supported SDGs viewed most of WIPO’s work as contributing to SDG 9, the building of infrastructure and industrialization, as well as goal 8, that of economic growth.

Surprisingly few of WIPO’s activities were viewed by WIPO as contributing to the SDGs of education, hunger, protecting biodiversity, combating climate change, or ensuring human health.

“Developed” countries argue “that only a few goals apply to the work of WIPO, and others argue that there should be no ‘cherrypicking’ as all the goals in one way or another do apply to WIPO’s work as a UN agency.” The view of the “developed” countries, here, is completely ridiculous; it is clear that intellectual property plays an important role in relation to many SDGs, including those related to food and agriculture, health, innovation, climate change, biodiversity, and technology transfer.

The world intellectual property system, at present, also sometimes works contrary to achievement of the SDGs, by locking up agricultural innovation, inflating drug prices, stalling innovation, rewarding the invention and sale of dirty technologies, locking up biodiversity, and preventing technology transfer. There is no shortage of proposals for reform that would help to address these problems. (See the work of Peter Drahos, Matthew Rimmer, and Ahmed Abdel-Latif, among many others.) Industry players note the important role of intellectual property in potentially stalling climate-friendly innovation; this is why Tesla has adopted open patent policies to encourage the take-up and spread of electric vehicle technology.

WIPO and its member states should acknowledge the links between intellectual property and both sustainable and unsustainable development. The UN sustainable development agenda requires WIPO, as a UN agency, and its member states to build and retool world intellectual property institutions for sustainable development.

[Original post available here]

Marrakesh Treaty Coming into Force Today

On June 30th this year, Canada became the 20th nation to accede the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled, a decision that was said to be “long overdue” The Treaty, originally adopted in Morocco in June 2013, is coming into effect today. “The coming into force of the Treaty will mark the last step of a long journey toward a more inclusive global community, where print-disabled and visually impaired people can more fully and actively participate in society and reach their full potential,” said Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep Bains.

Photo: WIPO - Emmanuel Berrod.
Photo: WIPO – Emmanuel Berrod.

The main objective of the Marrakesh Treaty is to address the “book famine” by facilitating the access of published books by people who are blind, visually impaired or otherwise print disabled. It requires from the countries who signed into the Treaty to have an exception to domestic copyright law for visually impaired and print disabled people. It also focuses on the accessibility of published works by harmonizing limitations and exceptions to the exchange of works across borders. It will hopefully increase the numbers of accessible works over the world. According to the World Blind Union, over 90% of published materials are currently not available to the nearly 300 million people that are blind or have a print disability.

A FAQ was put together by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada to explain how the Marrakesh Treaty benefits Canadians. 

Fair dealing and course packs: Canadian and international challenges

by Sara Bannerman

A draft study by Professor Seng presented last week at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is of particular relevance to Canada, where many universities have recently begun to take the stance that the inclusion of articles or book chapters, for example, in hard copy and electronic course packs, is fair dealing that does not require permission or payment of copyright fees.  Is the Canadian universities’ interpretation of fair dealing in line with the policies adopted in other countries?  Professor Seng’s study sheds some light on this question.  Read my full blog post on this topic here. Chapter 4: “Access to education, libraries, and traditional knowledge” of my book International Copyright and Access to Knowledge addresses the history and present politics of copyright in educational works.