SCCR29: Opening statement of the Asia and the Pacific Group on limitations and exceptions for libraries and archives

On Thursday afternoon, 11 December 2014, Bangladesh delivered the following powerful intervention on behalf of the Asia and the Pacific Group on limitations and exceptions for libraries and archives. This group includes nations such as Bangladesh, Iran, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand. The Asia and Pacific Group stressed that copyright limitations and exceptions were assured to developing countries and LDCs to ensure a more balanced and efficient international copyright system anchored in Article 7 of the WTO TRIPS Agreement,

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SCCR 29: Statements by European broadcasters and push back by copyright owners (IFPI & FIAP)

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).

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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

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.

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WIPO patent committee (SCP21) to discuss International Nonproprietary Names and Exceptions and Limitations to Patent Rights

In the words of the International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (SCP) was created,

created in 1998 to serve as a forum to discuss issues, facilitate coordination and provide guidance concerning the progressive international development of patent law.

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