On 4 September 2013, the Department of Trade and Industry (the DTI) of the Republic of South Africa released its long-awaited “Draft National Policy on Intellectual Property“. This policy framework was gazetted in the Government Gazette as Vol. 579, No. 36816. Public comments will be accepted until 17 October 2013.
Continue Reading →
On the last week of July 2013, the Department of Commerce Internet Policy Task Force released a green paper on copyright.
Continue Reading →
The World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Program and Budget Committee is meeting from 8 July 2013 to 12 July 2013. Among the documents under consideration is WIPO’s Draft Proposed Program and Budget for the 2014/15 Biennium (WO/PBC/20/3) which fleshes out WIPO’s strategic goals and program of work for 2014/2015. Continue Reading →
We are very happy with the agreement. There were a few areas where the treaty could have been better, but these are areas of minor quibbles. The first order issues all went in favor of blind persons. The treaty will provide a dramatic and massive improvement in access to reading materials for persons in common languages, such as English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Arabic, and it will provide the building blocks for global libraries to service blind persons. Continue Reading →
My name is Fedro De Tomassi. I am a student at St. Olaf College, class of 2014, and next week I will be a volunteer (as a guide and interpreter) at the Diplomatic Conference to Conclude a Treaty to Facilitate… Continue Reading →
May 18, 2013 About the list. This is a work in progress. KEI has been engaged in the negotiations for a WIPO treaty on copyright exceptions for persons with disabilities since 2008. We have attended each negotiation that has been… Continue Reading →
For the past year, a treaty on copyright exceptions for persons who are blind or have other disabilities has been hung up on demands by the European Union to insert provocative language on the so called “three step test” in… Continue Reading →
For the past year, a treaty on copyright exceptions for persons who are blind or have other disabilities has been hung up on demands by the European Union to insert provocative language on the so called “three step test” in copyright into the treaty. The Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement is in the middle of a similar dispute, with the US pushing language that would place the three step test on top of all copyright limitations and exceptions, including those set out a particular cases in the Berne Convention. Continue Reading →
Geneva, Tuesday, 18 December.2012
At the end of the two day WIPO Extraordinary General Assembly, Member States today agreed “to negotiate and adopt a treaty on limitations and exceptions for visually impaired persons/persons with print disabilities.”
Continue Reading →