Centre for Internet and Society

Press Release: Users’ rights and interests should be balanced with those of IP rights-holders: Global Congress

geetha — 2015-12-17T08:40:05Z

The Global Congress on Intellectual Property and Public Interest is being held at the National Law University, Delhi, on 15-17 December 2015. The global event is jointly organized by CIS, NLU Delhi, Open A.I.R., CREATe, Columbia University and American University. Below is the Press Release from Day 2 of the Global Congress.

Press Release

16 December 2015

Users’ rights and interests should be balanced with those of IP rights-holders

Today, on the 2^nd day of the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and Public Interest at NLU-Delhi, a range of issues were discussed across the parallel tracks. The Access to Medicines track opened with a keynote address by the honourable Justice Kirby, former judge of the High Court of Australia and current member of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Access to Medicines. The Openness track saw discussions on collaborative innovation, the future of openness and access to education, along with cross-sectoral perspectives on openness.

In the Intellectual Property and Development track, the discussions centred around the intersection of traditional knowledge, geographical indicators and indigenous rights, on agriculture and plant varieties with specific references to the Indian position, and an exploration of the global South’s research networks on IP, innovation and development. The track focused on a range of themes, including the development issues that arise from varying approaches to intellectual property, i.e., closed or open approaches, depending on the limitations placed on the sharing and use of knowledge produced with public funding.

The User Rights track is closely aligned with openness. Today, the track explored issues of copyright reform and digital democracy, along with concerns of increasing propertisation of data. A discussion around trade agreements and their impact and enforcement on copyright and the Internet allied with the above sessions.

Speakers shared their views on a variety of issues:

Access to Medicines

Justice Michael Kirby, former judge of the High Court of Australia and its longest serving judge, spoke on the changing challenges in the ‘access to medicine’ movement. There has been a sea change in the access to anti-retroviral drugs, he said, but also increasing challenges.

“The key question in access to medicines is this: How do you provide just returns for inventors, while at the same time respecting the universal right to essential healthcare? Developing states like India are increasingly at risk. In 2001, the UN Special Rapporteur on Access to Medicines expressed his concern about the fact that TRIPS flexibilities open to developing states are rarely used. This concern is deepening with the trend of United States, Japan Switzerland and other European countries convincing poorer states to give up their TRIPS exceptions and flexibilities.”

Anand Grover of Lawyers Collective was concerned that intellectual property is not delivering on its stated objectives, particularly in developed states.

“It is important,” he said, “to keep checking whether objectives are met through the patent system. Earlier, generic manufacturers were keen to employ a strategy that invited conflict from patent-holders and pharmaceutical companies. But increasingly, their strategies are backfiring; courts are leaning towards granting injunctions against generic manufacturers. This is a real concern.”

Shiba Phurailatpam of the Asia-Pacific Network of People living with HIV/AIDS spoke of the increasingly dismal scenario of access to affordable medicines in middle-income countries:

“Multinational companies are using World Bank classifications of GDP to deny affordable medicines to millions in the developing world. With the profits they are making in these countries, they then lobby their governments to push TRIPS-plus measures in our countries through FTAs and bilateral pressure. Meanwhile they are also entering into restrictive voluntary licenses with key Indian generic companies that exclude middle-income countries. 20 years of TRIPS has only strengthened pharmaceutical corporate power over the lives and health of patients. If we are serious about universal health care the monopolies on medicines have to end.”

Openness

“The digital environment cannot be developed without an important agenda on open policy and copyright reforms,” said Carolina Botero of the Karisma Foundation.

Lawrence Liang, legal researcher and expert on the practice and ethics of intellectual property and openness, said,

“Over the past decade and a half, the language of openness and ‘Access to Knowledge’ has emerged as an important counter to the dominant proprietary and protectionist approach of the global IP regime. By shifting the focus from proprietary systems to open ones, and from control to equitable access, the openness frame has created a political and ethical language with which people could redress the harmful effects of strong IP regimes. Open systems of knowledge production and dissemination such as Wikipedia and Open Access journals could play a key role in helping developing countries gain access to learning materials and knowledge which are locked into expensive databases. In that sense openness is an important political strategy to address questions of equity and distributive justice in the information era.”

Alek Tarkowski, Director of Centrum Cyfrowe Projekt in Poland, concurred,

“Open licensing models and modern copyright rules are complementary from the perspective of ensuring freedom of education."

Mishi Choudhary, Executive Director of SFLC.in, said that

“The government of India is right in embracing Free and Open Source Software, and in encouraging free sharing enabled by the suite of Creative Commons licences. It is crucial to understand that intellectual property is not an end in itself. The 21^st century needs innovation policy and collaborative innovation, not IP maximalism.”

Intellectual Property and Development

K.M. Gopakumar, legal advisor and senior researcher at Third World Network, said,

“The current IP regime prioritises the rights of intellectual property-holders without addressing development needs. A change in this status quo is the need of the hour. There is an urgent need for governments, specially in developing countries, to interrogate the international IP regime to achieve sustainable development goals, instead of simply following the propaganda of transnational corporations and their home governments.”

Lucienne Abrahams, Director of the LINK Centre for Digital Transformation in South Africa, argued that,

“Innovation to produce more effective medicines for dread diseases and pandemics, to produce clean technologies, and digital technologies, in the high technology hubs forming across the African continent, the Asian continent and other developing regions of the world, requires open innovation approaches to keep up with the demand of more than 4 billion people for new technologies to enhance quality of life and to address conditions of dire poverty. Patents and copyright provide too meager opportunities for development-oriented innovation.”

User Rights

Claudio Ruiz of Derechos Digitales spoke of the need for greater engagement between advocates and scholars towards openness:

“There needs to be a better connection between advocates and scholars towards openness, and therefore, develop a better Intellectual Property regime, especially for developing countries. The Users Rights track at the Global Congress is a great gathering to connect those worlds and therefore to fill the existent gaps in terms of research and advocacy.

“One of the most important challenges we are facing today is to fight existing narratives on intellectual property. Today, these are considered the only way to enhance and protect creation of content and culture. But new developments, especially those connected with technology and the Internet, are a huge opportunity to create new narratives around this topic and to create a safer space for users around the world who are seen today as pirates and copyright infringers. The last 40 years’ of international regulation on copyright has been mainly driven by private interest of copyright owners, the users and the general public being alien to these discussions. The development of the Internet today creates a great opportunity to connect users and the general public with the international regulation of copyright. Copyright regulation is not just about content owners, but about access to knowledge and information for everyone. That implies the need to address public interest as the main topic and not as a marginal one.”

“One of the most important issues for India and for the world today,” said Prabir Purkayastha of the Knowledge Commons Collective, “is the question of data rights. The world is grappling with these. The Internet economy today is based on converting personal information into private property. Data rights are critical from the perspective of privacy, and also whether data rights should constitute property rights.”

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Photographs of the speakers can be found at this link: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B60BN7sFZRQFSzNFSERkTmtrcEE&usp=sharing.

For more information, please contact me at geetha@cis-india.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/press-release-users2019-rights-and-interests-should-be-balanced-with-those-of-ip-rights-holders-global-congress

Press Release: Medicines should not bankrupt patients or public health systems: Access to medicines at the Global Congress

geetha — 2015-12-17T08:33:54Z

PRESS RELEASE
DECEMBER 15, 2015: DAY 1

Medicines should not bankrupt patients or public health systems: Access to medicines at the Global Congress

No wealth? No health, then!

Today, on the 2nd day of the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and Public Interest, access to medicines has been a crucial theme. All the more so, since the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Access to Medicines had its first meeting on December 11, 2015. At a critical crossroads for access to medicines, we are delighted to welcome Justice Michael Kirby, former justice of the High Court of Australia and a member of the High Level Panel, as a keynote speaker at the Global Congress. Justice Kirby will be speaking on 16 December 2015, the 3rd day of the Congress.

On day 1, reflecting on the critical questions in the ‘access to medicines’ movement, Matt Kavanagh of HealthGAP and University of Pennsylvania, said,
“In high-, middle- and low-income countries, people are going without access to new medicines for many disease areas including HIV, hepatitis C and cancer. This is because a year’s worth of meds can cost many times more than a year’s salary. This is driven by an IP system that is out of sync with the needs of the people. We are now seeing a global reckoning of how to reign in maximalist rights for intellectual property holders in favour of models that balance innovation, health and access.”

Dr. Germán Velásquez, Special Advisor for Health and Development at South Centre, agreed that,
“There has been a total failure in the model involving pharmaceutical patents. This is both an important problem and there is an urgent need to find alternatives to the patent system. The issue,” he said, “is the lack of an international authority. The World Health Organization no longer has teeth. What we need is a binding international treaty to tackle this crisis. Developed countries argue against this by claiming it will be financially burdensome for them, but a successful treaty on medical R&D would lead to better and more affordable medicines for everyone.”

Judit Rius of Médecins Sans Frontiéres concurred,
“There is ample evidence that the current intellectual property system has failed not only to deliver innovation, but also access. Prices of medicines are rising globally. The threats are more dire than ever with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It contains a very aggressive and dangerous IP-maximising agenda that will endanger access to medicines and increase drug prices for the whole of the ASEAN region, and potentially at the global level. Not only this, but India is under immense pressure to abandon the public health safeguards that have made it the ‘pharmacy of the developing world’. We should be looking for global solutions, and for that, India is critical and this Congress is pertinently timed.”

The TPP and its IP-maximising agenda weigh heavy on the minds of many experts. James Love, Director of Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), a human rights group that works on intellectual property rights and innovation, said,
“Trade agreements that expand and extend drug monopolies create policy-induced inequality in health. Governments need to resist measures that increase drug prices, but also fashion alternative frameworks for financing innovation, based upon the delinkage of R&D costs from drug prices."

The TPP is imposing US-centric standards on the rest of the world, said Burcu Kilic, Legal and Policy Director for Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program.
“Being here and discussing 20 years’ of TRIPS, it becomes clear that the intellectual property agenda has changed a lot. Today, we discuss not only TRIPS, but also the TPP, which is a ‘made-in-America’ agreement regulating IP. It seeks to introduce what it calls “21st century high standards”, but the evidence is clear that those higher standards on IP will result in lower standards of health and reduced access to medicines.”

Dr. Susan K. Sell, intellectual property expert and Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, spoke of dangerous trends in access to medicines.
“The rise of investor-state dispute mechanisms is the ‘camel’s nose inside the tent’ in access to medicine,” said Dr. Sell. “The Eli Lilly case in Canada is important to IP rights-holders. They are trying to use a non-transparent channel to get public health rules struck down.”

Anand Grover of Lawyers Collective said, “Inter-state dispute resolution systems under BITs are private, non-transparent entities which are taking decisions that impact health and welfare.” Also, “product patents lead to monopoly and exorbitant prices, and process patents lead to relative competition. This is a message that is being lost in a lot of governments, including ours.”

Dr. Amit Sengupta of the Delhi Science Forum offered his views on the impact on India. “At the moment, there are principal shifts in public policy in India, with impacts on the generic drugs industry. The ‘pharmacy of the global South’ is under threat,” said Dr. Sengupta, “and this affects not only India, but also those in need in other states as well. The Global Congress is very relevant, in that we perceive India under pressure to ensure patent protection, while other states move towards emulating India’s health safeguards.”

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Please find photographs of some of the quoted speakers in this folder:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B60BN7sFZRQFVGtZWDQ3c25MbDg&usp=sharing.

For further information, please contact:
Matthew Kavanagh: mkav@sas.upenn.edu
Burcu Kilic: bkilic@citizen.org
Geetha Hariharan: geetha@cis-india.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/press-release-medicines-should-not-bankrupt-patients-or-public-health-systems-access-to-medicines-at-the-global-congress

Press Release: India to Host 4th Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest

geetha — 2015-12-14T09:21:01Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is happy to announce that 4th edition of the Global Congress will be held at the National Law University, New Delhi (NLU-D) on 15-17 December 2015. The Congress is jointly organised by CIS, NLU-D, Open A.I.R., CREATe, Columbia University and American University.

In October this year, the 7-year-long negotiations leading up to the Trans-pacific Partnership (TPP) came to an end. The pluri-lateral TPP has not received the coverage it deserves; its provisions do more harm to users and developing countries than are easily spotted. For instance, the TPP has an anti-FOSS clause, which may prevent and prohibit governments like India from adopting open access and FOSS mandates in research.

This should cause public outrage. FOSS (Free and open source software), which allows users to freely use, study, adapt and modify the source code, plays a crucial role in access to knowledge and information. Many states, including India, mandate the use of FOSS in research and make open access mandatory. For instance, an IIM study says that India could save Rs. 8254 crores by implementing FOSS in schools and other institutions. But with the TPP, all this could change.

Access to knowledge is not the only sufferer. With our progressive patent regime, India is often called the pharmacy of the world. Indeed, we may go so far as to say that the poor depend on India for generic, affordable drugs. But the global story is far from India’s success. In many states, the pharmaceutical industry’s stronghanded lobbying has had drastic impacts on access to medicines. A disheartening exemplar is Martin Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharma and KaloBio Pharmaceuticals. To public outrage, Mr Shkreli announced an astronomic hike in the price of benznidazole, a drug commonly used in the treatment of Chagas diseas. Mr Shkreli plans to increase prices from US $50-$100 for a typical treatment, to US $60,000-100,000. What is worse: Mr Shkreli is neither the first nor the only man in the price-hike arena.

Intellectual property laws are meant to balance innovation and access, serving the interests of rights-owners and users alike. But today, global intellectual property regimes prioritise the interests of rights-owners, often neglecting the consequences on users and the general public. The result is expensive barriers to access to medicines, scientific and academic scholarship, and technologies for development.

The 4^th Global Congress on Intellectual Property and Public Interest, the first gathering in Asia of over 500 public interest-oriented intellectual property practitioners from across the world, seeks to balance users’ rights and interests with those of rights-owners. It brings together research, civil society, industry and regulatory and policy-making communities for active, intense engagement on key public-interest intellectual property issues

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is happy to announce that 4^th edition of the Global Congress will be held at the National Law University, New Delhi (NLU-D) on 15-17 December 2015. The largest ever in Asia, the Congress is jointly organised by CIS, NLU-D, Open A.I.R., CREATe, Columbia University and American University.

The 4^th Congress is themed around “Three Decades of Openness; Two Decades of TRIPS” and will be organised in four parallel ‘tracks’ of (1) Openness, (2) Access to Medicines, (3) User Rights, (4) IP and Development. The Congress seeks to produce three outcomes — first, the mobilization of existing scholarly research directly into the hands of civil society advocates, business leaders and policy makers, leading to evidence-based policies and practices; second, the collaborative identification of urgent global and local research priorities towards generating joint research/advocacy agendas; and third, the solidification of an inter-disciplinary, cross-sector and global networked community of experts and practitioners focused on the public interest aspects of Access to Knowledge policy and practice.

Distinguished Speakers and Scholars

We are delighted to host a distinguished group of keynote speakers with a wide range of expertise. The Congress will open with plenary sessions featuring keynote speakers such as Prof. (Dr.) Ranbir Singh, Vice Chancellor of NLU-D, Mr. G.K. Raghavendar, Joint Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Prof. (Dr.) Hong Xue, Director of the Institute for Internet Policy and Law at Beijing Normal University, Dr. Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, and Dr. Nagla Rizk, Founding Director of the Access to Knowledge for Development Center (A2K4D) at the School of Business, The American University in Cairo.

Throughout the Congress, participants will break into rooms for theme-specific presentations, workshops and panel discussions. In a decentralised, democratic manner, experts in the field will curate thematic, problem-based discussions in parallel ‘tracks’ to explore content.

In an interview prior to the Congress, several experts shared their views on the burning issues in intellectual property. Sharing his views on access to medicines, Prof. Shamnad Basheer, founder of SpicyIP said, “The gap between generic interests and patient interests are widening. As a result of this, there is increasing pressure on civil society to fight the good fight and continue opposing frivolous pharma patents. Also, we need to look into the specifics and determine whether the innovation brought forth by an entity really furthers personal interests or the interests of the community or society at large. Good faith is a large part of this equation and it can help determine if what one is doing is in larger public interest or private interest.”

On the same issue, Prof. Susan Sell from George Washington University said, “There are big differences between NGOs in the access to medicine movement and pharmaceutical companies. There are many representatives of pharmaceutical firms that really believe in the morality of their position – that you need protection to innovate the next generation of drugs. They sincerely believe that the development of drought-resistant plants is something that is good for the world. So these people also make a moral claim whether or not you agree with it. The point is such claims are not purely cynical or instrumental on the part of such actors.”

Dr. Michael Geist, Law Professor at University of Ottawa commented on the movement advocating open access to scholarly and scientific literature. He raised his concerns on Article Processing Charges (APC), a model currently employed by publishers, saying, “The APC model may price open access out of the hands of many scholars. We need experimentation with different open models, recognizing the economic uncertainty of switching away from high-priced subscriptions. However, APC may entrench much of the current model and is among the least desirable (though increasingly common) publisher approaches to Open Access.”

Concurring with Dr. Geist’s statement, Mr. Zakir Thomas, an expert in the field of intellectual property rights and open source innovation, said, “Creating a national depository of open access journals which are properly cited and indexed, organized subject-wise and searchable online by all our academic institutions should be the next step. Open access is about access to knowledge. It will ensure that the work you do at your lab is now accessible by people at large.”

New at the Global Congress

The 4^th Congress comes with marked changes based on feedback from participants from the earlier editions. A Room of Scholars is planned, in which key research outputs such as advanced chapters or white papers may be presented. Another important addition will be structured Cross-Track Meetings, focusing on research cutting across tracks, so that the tracks may share learnings and research outputs, and enter into collaborative dialogue.

A ‘Youth Workshop on Intellectual Property, Public Health and Access to Medicines’ is a novel feature at this Congress. Organised at NLU-D by the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development (ISID), Peoples Health Movement (PHM) and Prayas, from 14-22 December 2015.

The detailed schedule for the Global Congress can be accessed here.

For more information regarding the Global Congress or participation, please contact our team:

Swaraj Paul Barooah, Organiser: swaraj.barooah@gmail.com
Shruthi Chandrasekaran, Organiser: shruthi.chandrasekaran@gmail.com
Geetha Hariharan, Press Officer: geetha@cis-india.org

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About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS, http://cis-india.org) is a non-for-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research from policy and academic perspectives on digital technologies and the Internet. Our focus areas of research include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), Internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy and cyber-security. CIS’ academic wing seeks to understand the mediation and reconfiguration of social and cultural processes and structures by the Internet and digital media technologies.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/press-release-india-to-host-4th-global-congress-on-intellectual-property-and-the-public-interest

Ministry Clearances for the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest 2015

Swaraj Barooah — 2015-11-21T07:16:32Z

This is to declare and share the clearances received from the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of External Affairs for the organisation of the fourth Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest during December 15-17 in Delhi.

Global Congress 2015 - Clearance Letter - Ministry of Home Affairs: Download (PDF).
Global Congress 2015 - Clearance Letter - Ministry of External Affairs: Download (PDF).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/ministry-clearances-global-congress-2015

Global Congress 2015 - A Collection of Resources

Nisha S Kumar — 2016-05-03T02:24:01Z

The 4th edition of the Global Congress 2015 was organized at the National Law School of India University in New Delhi from 15 - 17 December 2015. The largest ever in Asia, the Global Congress was jointly organized by the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) in association with National Law University, Delhi, Open A.I.R., CREATe, Columbia University and American University.

The Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest was one of the most significant events on the calendar for scholars and policy advocates working on intellectual property from a public interest perspective. This year, the discussions included attention to broad perspectives on clarifying the meaning and reality of open collaborative innovation, as well as significant focus on the sub-themes of economic development (innovation and software patents, clean technologies, climate change and green patenting, issues of branding and plain packaging); sustainable development (agriculture and geographic indicators [GI]); policy, law and regulation (role of governments, patenting, compulsory licensing [CL], global institutions [particularly WTO, WIPO and WHO] and national institutions [particularly patent offices]). Trade dominated the discussions across the IP and Dev track, including the TPP and other issues, reflecting the strong global trade agenda.

For a summary of the wrap-up of the IP and Development track click here.


Global Congress participants in one of the sessions.

Presentations by the Pervasive Technologies Team at CIS

Nehaa Chaudhari: The Curious Case of the CCI: Competition Law and SEP Regulation in India
Amba Uttara Kak and Maggie Huang: Rethinking Music Copyright Management in the Age of Digital Distribution: Business Models, Licensing Practices and Copyright Institutions in India
Rohini Lakshané: Patent Landscaping in the sub-$100 Mobile Device Market in India
Anubha Sinha: IP in Mobile Applications Development in India

Interview Series

Job Michael Mathew, an intern at CIS conducted a series of interviews as a lead up to the Global Congress: Mathew conducted interviews with Michael Geist, Zakir Thomas, Susan K. Sell, Shamnad Basheer, and Jayashree Watal.

Photographs

See the photographs from the Global Congress 2015 on Flickr: Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3 (Conclusion).

Call for Participation: Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest

sinha — 2015-06-24T16:11:07Z

We are pleased to announce the call for participation for the fourth edition of the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (“Global Congress”), being hosted at New Delhi from December 15 to 17, 2015.

The theme for this year’s Congress will be “Three Decades of Openness; Two Decades of TRIPS.” We are now inviting applications to participate in the Congress, including session participation and presentations. We are also welcoming proposals for panels and workshops.

The application form is available now at [http://form.jotformpro.com/form/50854976184973?] Please note that this form is for application purposes, and does not amount to confirmation of participation. The registrations for the plenary sessions, which are open to the public, will open closer to the date of the Global Congress.

Deadlines

August 1st: Priority Deadline for Applications- Applicants will be considered on a rolling basis, with applications made by August 1st being given first consideration. Applications after August 1st to receive travel assistance will be considered only under exceptional circumstances (these details will be collected in a subsequent form).

November 1st: All applications for session participation and paper submissions will close on November 1st.

Application Information

For applications to participate/host: Applications to present or host workshops shall be considered based on the proposals to be submitted in the form.

For applications to attend sessions: Applications to attend sessions as discussants will be considered based on the statement of purpose and/or any other relevant information provided by the applicant.

Limited travel grants to cover accommodation and/or travel to the Congress will be available, with priority to those from developing countries.

Background, Theme and Expected Outcomes

The Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest is the most significant event on the calendar for scholars and policy advocates working on intellectual property from a public interest perspective. By sharing their research and strategies, the network of experts and activists supported by the Global Congress are empowered to put forward a positive agenda for policy reform. The Global Congress began in Washington D.C. in 2011, moved to Rio de Janeiro in 2012, and was held in Cape Town in 2013. The fourth Global Congress will now be held in New Delhi, in December 2015. The event would be the largest convening of public interest-oriented intellectual property practitioners ever held in Asia, and would help link in the world's most populous region to these global debates around how intellectual property policy can best serve the public interest.

The fourth edition of the Global Congress brings research, civil society, industry and regulatory and policy-making communities together for active, intense engagement on key public-interest intellectual property issues. Opportunities for these groups to interact are rare but valuable; and have been proven to lead to successful policy outcomes. The 4^th edition of the Congress, slated to be held in December, 2015 in New Delhi seeks to be one such opportunity.

The theme for the 2015 Congress is Three Decades of Openness; Two Decades of TRIPS-coming at a pivotal time for reflection, revision, and further strategizing. Specifically, the 2015 Congress seeks to produce three outcomes- first, the mobilization of existing scholarly research directly into the hands of civil society advocates, business leaders and policy makers, leading to evidence-based policies and practices; second, the collaborative identification of urgent, global and local research priorities and generation of a joint research/advocacy agenda; and third, the solidification of an inter-disciplinary, cross-sector and global networked community of experts focused on public interest aspects of IP policy and practice.

Participation Opportunities

Discussions at the Global Congress will be carried out in the form of plenary sessions, thematic tracks, cross-track sessions, and the room of scholars. Participation is invited for the thematic track sessions, cross-track sessions and the room of scholars.

The thematic tracks at the Global Congress are: 1) Openness, 2) Access to Medicines, 3) User Rights, 4) IP and Development. Cross-track sessions will feature research that cuts across tracks in order to facilitate engagement between tracks on themes of mutual interest.

The Room of Scholars will feature presentations of research outputs such as draft works or white papers that may not fit directly within the thematic tracks but fall within the overall theme of the Global Congress.

Participation could be in the form of presenting / discussing conference papers or policy briefs, or by conducting workshops where they may share their own work and solicit feedback from peers, during the aforementioned sessions.

The application form for participation is available now at http://form.jotformpro.com/form/50854976184973?. Please forward this invitation to interested lists and individuals. For more information or questions, you may contact global-congress@cis-india.org.

Organisation

The 4^th Global Congress on Intellectual Property and Public Interest, is being organised in cooperation with National Law University, Delhi, by the American Assembly at Columbia University, the Centre for Internet and Society, Open A.I.R., and the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University Washington College of Law.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/call-for-participation-global-congress-on-intellectual-property-and-the-public-interest

Announcing the Tracks for the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest 2015

sinha — 2014-08-22T09:47:27Z

CIS recently announced that the Centre for Internet and Society will be hosting the fourth edition of the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest at New Delhi, India, tentatively in the first two weeks of December, 2015. This post declares the track events to be conducted, seeks your participation and invites contributions from potential funders.

The Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest ("Global Congress") was instituted in 2011 at Washington D.C. Since its inception, three editions of the Global Congress have engaged national and international governmental entities, the private sector, civil society, and academia in providing perspectives and future scenarios for intellectual property, innovation and development.

The five tracks at the Global Congress 2015 will be:

a) User Rights
b) Patents (including Access to Medicines, but wider in scope)
c) Enforcement
d) Traditional Knowledge
e) Openness

We will soon post updates on the track leaders. We invite interested participants to send proposals for presentations, workshops and other side events for the Global Congress. Please share with us funding proposals for conferences/events and details of potential funders, or help out with funding, if possible.

You may contact the following CIS members to send in your queries and suggestions for the event:

CIS Global Congress Planning Team

Anubha Sinha- anubha@cis-india.org
M.P. Nagaraj- nagaraj@cis-india.org
Maggie Huang- maggie@cis-india.org
Pranesh Prakash- pranesh@cis-india.org
Rohini Lakshane- rohini@cis-india.org
Sunil Abraham- sunil@cis-india.org
Nehaa Chaudhari- nehaa@cis-india.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/announcing-the-tracks-for-the-global-congress-on-intellectual-property-and-the-public-interest-2015

Announcing the Institutional Partner for the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest 2015

sinha — 2015-01-07T13:34:51Z

We are pleased to announce that National Law University, Delhi will be hosting the fourth edition of the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest in December 2015.

About National Law University, Delhi

National Law University, Delhi ("NLU-D") is a premier law school located in Dwarka, Delhi. NLU-D aspires to be a University producing stellar research and has already undertaken steps in that direction. The excellent infrastructure offered to its students is in sync with progress on the academic front. The University regularly plays host to international and national events.

About the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest

Global Congress, December 2015: Save the date

We will soon announce the exact dates for the Global Congress to be hosted in December 2015. Please share with us funding proposals for conferences/events and details of potential funders, or help out with funding, if possible.

You may contact the following CIS members to send in your queries and suggestions for the event:

CIS Global Congress Planning Team

Anubha Sinha- anubha@cis-india.org
M.P. Nagaraj- nagaraj@cis-india.org
Maggie Huang- maggie@cis-india.org
Pranesh Prakash- pranesh@cis-india.org
Rohini Lakshane- rohini@cis-india.org
Sunil Abraham- sunil@cis-india.org
Nehaa Chaudhari- nehaa@cis-india.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/announcing-the-institutional-partner-for-the-global-congress-on-intellectual-property-and-the-public-interest-2015

4th Global Congress on IP and the Public Interest: Statement of Conclusion for the IP and Development track

nehaa — 2015-12-25T02:22:52Z

The 4th Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest was held from December 15 to 17, 2015 in New Delhi. This post provides a summary of the event.

This was also published on the Global Congress blog.

Wrap up note 1: Feedback on broad discussion in the IP and Dev track – set of collected key points:

This year, the discussions included attention to broad perspectives on clarifying the meaning and reality of open collaborative innovation, as well as significant focus on the sub-themes of economic development (innovation and software patents, clean technologies, climate change and green patenting, issues of branding and plain packaging); sustainable development (agriculture and geographic indicators [GI]); policy, law and regulation (role of governments, patenting, compulsory licensing [CL], global institutions [particularly WTO, WIPO and WHO] and national institutions [particularly patent offices]). Trade dominated the discussions across the IP and Dev track, including the TPP and other issues, reflecting the strong global trade agenda.

Missing areas in the track papers, workshops and panel discussions included the limited discussion on traditional knowledge (TK); the work of indigenous groups and how they are navigating the IP landscape; biodiversity; biotech and food security; innovation in the nanotechnology sphere; and inclusive development. Accessibility to innovations for low-income households, and accessibility to innovations at the country level needs greater attention. These topics can be brought out more strongly, more directly.

The value of building research networks to create explicit knowledge and coherence in research-based evidence for advocacy and policy-making was made visible in the workshop session presented by Open AIR, with the Open AIR network as the exemplar. The challenge is to translate the kinds of research and evidence presented at the GC into content and value for policy-making and trade negotiations.

Wrap up note 2: Value of the deliberations and future research:

This is a new track in the GC, introduced in 2015. It is an important track for this and future Global Congresses because it brings together the many strands of research, advocacy and other work that are related to topics in innovation, IP and development, but which are not specifically about openness, user rights or A2M. This is a very broad range of fields of study, from agriculture to nanotechnology. It was proposed that the track be renamed “Innovation and Development” to more explicitly describe its focus.

From this GC, it has become clearer what future topics may be considered for papers and other inputs into the IP and Dev track. Such topics include counter-narratives to mainstream IP perspectives; bringing IP for development in multiple sectors to the fore – in education; in automotive manufacturing; in technology evolution; in agricultural production and food security; in the broad policy, law and regulatory environment pertinent to these and other sectoral perspectives. For example, in the paper on green patenting, reference was made to Tesla and Toyota releasing patents, but the session did not get to discuss that. The papers presented at the 4th GC suggest many areas of focus for future research and future GCs – perhaps the best way to think about this exploration is through greater attention to innovation in a range of social and economic sectors; to consider the particular challenges of innovation, IP and development in LDCs; to study innovation ecosystems and where IP fits in these ecosystem. Cross-track sessions are also considered to be very important because of the knowledge sharing that takes place across sectors, for example the discussions on patent wars in the access to medicines (A2M) track provided food for thought with respect to emerging issues in the software sector.

Wrap up note 3: Ideas and implications of GC sessions for future directions for research, collaborations and next GC:

For the next GC, mobilization is required across various geographic regions and a significant discussion is required on preparation and design of the sub-themes, based on the notes above. The requirement for more evidence-based research was noted. It was recommended that the future name of the track should be Innovation and Development. The core group, comprised of track leaders and sessions chairs, should continue the leadership of the track from GC to GC, bringing additional interested persons on board, in particular with respect to the design of sub-themes well in advance of the 5th GC, to guide prospective submissions.

Ends.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/4th-global-congress-on-ip-and-the-public-interest-statement-of-conclusion-for-the-ip-and-development-track

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Users’ rights and interests should be balanced with those of IP rights-holders

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Announcing the Institutional Partner for the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest 2015

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Global Congress, December 2015: Save the date

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4th Global Congress on IP and the Public Interest: Statement of Conclusion for the IP and Development track

Wrap up note 1: Feedback on broad discussion in the IP and Dev track – set of collected key points:

Wrap up note 2: Value of the deliberations and future research:

Wrap up note 3: Ideas and implications of GC sessions for future directions for research, collaborations and next GC: