Following Professor Crews’ presentation of his updated report on limitations and exceptions (L&E) for libraries and archives, today more member states, IGOs and NGOs engaged again in an interesting Q&A. After years in this committee, I have rarely witnessed such enthusiasm and interest among all the SCCR participants about a report. Continue Reading
The SCCR 29 went again into informals this morning and NGOs can listen but not report on what is going on. As per the agenda, the broadcasting treaty is still the topic of discussion. While the US delegation was supporting making the charts describing the definitions, concepts and rights being discussed available to the public, there were other delegations (TBD) against it and the charts are thus still “secret”.
We are reconvening into plenary after the coffee break.
Also presented during the afternoon plenary, here are 3 statements by public interest organizations, the TACD, EFF and CIS:
SCCR29 At 3pm, the plenary reconvened and the NGOs made their statements regarding the rights, definitions and concepts of the proposed broadcasting treaty discussed during the informal with the help of charts.
On the public interest side we only had KEI, TACD, EFF and CIS. I will post these statements in another blog. Here are 3 statements that are good examples of what the arguments were for the broadcasters (the European Broadcasting Union) followed by the push back by the IFFPI (representing the music industry) and finally the FIAP (film industry also pushing back).
Below is a cleaned up version of the transcript, from my rambling intervention for KEI on the broadcasting treaty definitions.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My comments would be initially on the definitions.It is our position that it’s more appropriate to provide protection for free services that are traditionally provided by radio and television and less appropriate for pay services,
Broadcasters make sweeping demands on scope and rights in new WIPO treaty
To understand the negotiations this week at the WIPO SCCR 29, it is helpful to review an April 2014 document, endorsed by several broadcasting organizations.
The attached document* is a joint statement by 12 broadcasting organizations, on “THE OBJECTIVES, SPECIFIC SCOPE AND OBJECT OF THE PROPOSED WIPO BROADCASTERS’ TREATY”.
SCCR 29 December 9, 2014: 3 secret broadcasting treaty charts ?
The December 9, 2014 SCCR morning session started with the Chair’s summary of yesterday informals. The delegates discussed 3 charts. The first chart called “a technological platforms chart” is supposed to clarify the scope of protection of the new instrument, the broadcasters’ treaty. The second chart is called “a rights chart”. And additionally, the Chair prepared a third chart which was called a definitions chart, which contained the definitions of broadcasting organization, broadcasting transmission and signal. Continue Reading
SCCR 29 Morning Session: Is the Broadcasting Treaty crawling back?
The morning session of SCCR 29 (Dec 8-12, 2014) ended with a coffee break which will be followed by informals (that we are not allowed to report on at this point). After the usual decisions this morning i.e, Adoption of the agenda of the twenty ninth session then Accreditation of new non governmental organizations (and yes, the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP) is in!) we had the Adoption of the Report of the Twenty-Eighth Session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights. Continue Reading
SCCR29: Opening statement of the European Union
The World Intellectual Property Organization’s 29th Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) is meeting in Geneva from 8-12 December 2014. WIPO has a live stream of the proceedings; the password is sccr29. The opening statement of the European Union is contained below. Continue Reading
Patents with government interests, by disease, 2010 to 2013
The attached PDF file provides counts on the number of patents with various search terms in the specification (spec/”search term”), and the number of those patents that declare either government rights in the patents (govt/government), an assignment to the US government (an/”united states of america”), or both. The complete counts are in the PDF file. The queries were done by Claire Cassedy on December 5, 2014.