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IP/Gender:
Mapping the Connections
April 4, 2008
(Click Here to View Webcasts)
Tax Law and Cultural Property
January 31, 2008
(Click Here to View Webcast)
A Citizens Guide to the WIPO
November 6, 2007
(Click Here to View Webcast)
Professor Daniel J. Gervais will be the 4th annual Finnegan Distinguished Lecturer in Intellectual Property at American University Washington College of Law (WCL) October 21. The lecture, sponsored by WCL’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP), will be titled “TRIPS 3.0.”
Yoko Ono and EMI Group Ltd. have dropped copyright infringement lawsuits against the makers of a documentary that used a portion of John Lennon's "Imagine" without permission. But the development, which was announced Tuesday in a news release from Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project, comes too late to keep the song in the DVD release of the movie, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," according to a lawyer for the filmmakers.
The Library of Congress' triennial DMCA exemption proceeding has the potential to do something far more interesting: free America from some of its digital shackles. The last time around, exemptions were approved to unlock cell phones and bypass broken dongles, and the six exemptions will remain in effect until next October, at which point they will expire unless argued for and approved once more.
The Senate in Rwanda has approved the bill on protection of Intellectual Property Rights and effective enforcement mechanisms. The bill on intellectual property covers patent rights on trademarks and copyrights, and gives creators exclusive rights to their creations thereby providing an incentive for the author or inventor to develop and share the information rather than keep it secret.
The World Trade Organization has partly sided with the United States in a dispute with China over product piracy, officials said. The WTO panel faulted China for not prosecuting pirates who copy CDs and DVDs before they are passed by censors, one trade diplomat who had reviewed the interim ruling said Thursday. But Washington suffered a setback as the panel found that Chinese thresholds for prosecuting piracy do not break WTO rules, the official said.
Foo Fighters have denounced the use of their song by John McCain in his ongoing presidential campaign. The band said that the US Republican presidential hopeful has been "perverting the original sentiment" of their song 'My Hero' by using it for his purposes without their permission. In a statement issued today (October 8), the band criticised his campaign's alleged disregard for creativity intellectual property.
Reinforcing its place in the scientific community, the arXiv repository at Cornell University Library reached a new milestone in October 2008. Half a million e-print postings - research articles published online - now reside in arXiv, which is free and available to the public. arXiv is the primary daily information source for hundreds of thousands of researchers in many areas of physics and related fields. Its users include the world's most prominent researchers in science, including 53 Physics Nobel Laureates, 31 Fields Medalists and 55 MacArthur Fellows, as well as people in countries with limited access to scientific materials.
The Orphan Works Act of 2008 was passed by the Senate last week, but the House failed to take action before taking off for a couple of days, and the bill may be dead until after the fall election. The bill would have loosened restrictions on using copyright-protected works that have been abandoned by their creators. It has faced strong opposition from copyright holders who fear it could create loopholes that would insulate perpetrators of commercial copyright infringement. Unfortunately, after the Senate passed its version of the bill, it was sent to the House just as the current economic situation in the US took a downturn, leaving it lost in the fallout from the failed attempt to pass the $700 billion bailout bill.
Less than a week after RealNetworks launched its new DVD ripping and archiving product, RealDVD, a court has ordered the company to temporarily suspend its distribution. A visit to the RealDVD web site reveals a message from Real, stating that the product is unavailable.
A Canadian amendment to its intellectual property provisions, which would have made illegal ripping CDs to computers and iPods, died when the federal election was called for October 14th. However, the leader of the Vancouver Fair Copyright believes that provisions from the bill may return at a later date, and that these restrictions may have the potential to change the way Canadians use their music and other pieces of software in the future. In response to the bill, a protest was held in downtown Vancouver.
