Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The fight for copyright reform has become a secondary issue, it seems, amidst calls to take back the internet from “evil” intelligence services at the 14th edition of re:publica, the mega-conference on all things digital that took place in Berlin last week.
As the future United Nations development goals are being debated and decided, two important reports make the case for inclusion of a discussion on global governance and its impact on health.
The increasing influence and role of internet intermediaries over the past decade has led to a debate regarding their liability in relation to online infringement of copyright and related rights. A recent study analyses legal approaches adopted across both common law and civil law countries in order to pinpoint potential worldwide trends in these liability doctrines.
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) today wrote to several European Union commissioners in an appeal for them to weigh in against the standardisation of the Encrypted Media Extension (EME) for the new HTML version, HTML5.
Digitisation of copyrighted works is in growing demand, and books are increasingly being made widely available in digital form. Two forms of works however - orphan and out-of-commerce works - are in danger of missing out, said speakers at a recent World Intellectual Property Organization event, and there is a risk of forever losing an important part of our cultural heritage embedded in these works. Another panel, meanwhile, illustrated that laws on copyright and licensing also present obstacles to cross-border use of digitised works by universities, libraries and archives.
Last week, the World Intellectual Property Organization copyright committee ended without agreement on the conclusions of the meeting or its future work, to the dismay of librarians and archivists associations. During the week, numerous representatives of these communities gave vigorous accounts of why a treaty is vital to grant them exceptions to copyright.
A presentation of the Tunis Model Law this week at a World Intellectual Property Organization side event addressed how it could be updated and used as a tool to help developing countries implement new developments in international copyright-related law.
Nongovernmental organisations attending the World Intellectual Property Organization copyright committee meeting which this week sought to breach differences on what a treaty protecting broadcasters should cover, expressed their views with some unusual coherence.
NEW YORK – The annual Fordham Law School IP Law and Policy Conference held last week offered an intensive two days of in-depth legal issues in intellectual property, with a mix of perspectives from representatives of intergovernmental organisations, governments, courts, industry, and a smattering of public interest advocates.
ames Anaya, United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, today called on the owners of the Washington Redskins Football team to recognise that the name ‘Redskins’ constitutes a “hurtful reminder” of the “long history of mistreatment of Native American people in the United States.”