Centre for Internet and Society

Response by Knowledge Commons

pranesh — 2008-09-30T15:07:50Z

Arguments on why section 4.11 of the Patents Manual needs to be modified.

1. A patent is a state granted monopoly on an invention. As with any other monopoly, a patent must be treated with great discretion, especially since this particular monopoly is bestowed by the state itself. The original intent of the patent system was to encourage disclosure by the inventor, in exchange for exclusive rights to the invention. This ensured that inventors did not take their inventions to the grave and that society could build on existing knowledge rather than re-invent the wheel. As with any other policy instrument, we need to examine whether patents meet their intended objectives.

2. In this context, the degree of patent protection in India should be seen with the following in mind:

The desirable form of IPR protection is very much a function of development. Currently, the developed economies feel they should protect their IPR and restrict their dissemination. But these same countries have historically had much more lax IPR regimes that have allowed imitation to promote more rapid industrialization. For example, the US actively encouraged copying of European innovation in the 19th century and even “nationalised” wireless patents - claiming national interest. Even late 20th century rapid developers such as Japan and South Korea benefited greatly from relatively lax patent regimes. So there is a strong case for providing less IPR protection in the development phase, especially in those areas where domestic innovation is less advanced.

There is no clear correlation between high IPR protection and innovation[1], and much historical evidence to the contrary. A significant number of studies have shown that patents are important primarily in chemicals, chemical materials and pharmaceuticals, where patents can protect specific molecules or well defined but small slices of technology. In other areas, patents tend to be relatively less important in promoting innovation.

This means that India should first identify what are its national interests and then calibrate the IPR protection accordingly. For example, in pharmaceuticals, the current national interest lies clearly in restricting patents. This is also why the Indian Parliament has taken advantage of the flexibility of TRIPs to raise the bar of what is patentable. Indeed, other countries including the US are now copying some of these measures.[2]

An important example is in the area of software where India has a major interest, and where patents are being opposed by all Small and Medium sized companies. In Europe, this opposition led to the proposed directive on software patents to be defeated overwhelmingly in the European Parliament.

3. There are now attempts being made in India to bring in software patents using either the EPO or the USPTO practice. This attempt is being supported by a small number of large international software companies, who had earlier benefited from software being free from patents and are now trying to obstruct others who are entering the field. It is not in the interest of India's software industry to have restrictive patent regime, particularly as they switch from being service providers to product developers.

4. The EPO in fact has followed much of the USPTO practice, the only area that it differs with USPTO being in the business method patenting. However, as a number of observers have pointed out, this means drafting a business method patent as a technical application: it is the form of the patent rather than its content that changes with the EPO approach. Therefore, both EPO and USPTO have erred in accepting patents that are either algorithms or methods, dressed up as software patents.

5. The crisis of the US Patent Office is well known and many critics have pointed out that the US is facing effectively a broken patent system. They have pointed out that granting patents to objects that have existed for years, or patents that are patently ridiculous, does not serve any purpose whatsoever. A case in point is US Patent 20060071122, granted for a ‘full body teleportation system’. The abstract for this reads, ‘A pulsed gravitational wave wormhole generator system that teleports a human being through hyperspace from one location to another.’ Of course, there is no functional version of this. There are innumerable examples of this kind of patent being granted. Another kind of patent that serves no useful purpose is where the patented product or process is something that has been used for years and years, and is known to the whole world, such as the wheel, or swinging on a swing.[3] This undermines the entire basis of the patent system and has the potential to cause havoc. The rapid dilution of the tripartite test of novelty, non-obviousness and utility that led to such patents being granted is finally being halted in the USA, with the US Supreme Court ruling recently that obviousness cannot be constrained by a legal formulation, and the use of common sense is necessary in determining whether a patent be granted or not.[4]

6. Courts in all parts of the world have held that subject matter which would have the practical effect of pre-empting laws of nature, abstract ideas or mathematical algorithms is ineligible for patent protection. This age-old and time-tested precedent effectively establishes the ineligibility for patent protection to laws of nature, abstract ideas and mathematical algorithms. If these could be patented, then in effect one would be patenting the tools of scientific enquiry itself, something no patent law allows as it would lead to halting scientific progress.

7. In the past, the courts have also held that regarding patentable subject that the inquiry into whether subject matter is eligible for patenting is one of substance, not form. This requires that the patent office look, not simply at the language of the patent claim to see if it recites a structure of multiple steps or components, but also at the practical effect of the claim to see if it in fact covers -- or otherwise would restrict the public’s access to -- a principle, law of nature, abstract idea, mathematical formula, mental process, algorithm or other abstract intellectual concept. Otherwise, it would make the determination of patentable subject matter depend simply on the draftsman’s art and would ill serve the principles underlying the prohibition against patents for 'ideas' or phenomena of nature. By skilled patent drafting, one should not be able to start patenting essentially abstract ideas, mental processes and newly discovered laws of nature or mathematical algorithms.

8. However, a number of patent offices, particularly the USPTO and the EPO have been granting patents recently for software also. This is without taking into consideration that all software is ultimately the expression of algorithms or mathematical methods. This has already created a situation which Tim Berners-Lee, one of the founders of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium that sets global standards for the Internet, calls the biggest threat to software development.

All companies developing emerging technology are threatened by the prospect of patent licensing royalties. You could never find out what patent could possibly apply to what technology. You could never guess what things people might have the gall to say they have patented already. It really is a universal fear.’ (Tim Berners-Lee at Emerging Technologies Conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September 29, 2004.)

9. In the US, recent studies have shown that the only sector of the economy in which royalties are more than legal costs are pharmaceuticals[5]. In their recently published book, Bessen and Meurer have analysed the numbers in terms of revenues generated from patents as against cost of filing, maintaining and defending patents in courts. In their view, the data shows that except in the case of pharmaceuticals, patents generate far more litigation costs than revenue. The numbers are clear: domestic litigation costs --16 billion dollars in 1999 alone -- was about twice the revenue for patents. Even in this, almost two thirds of the revenue was from pharmaceuticals and chemicals. Worse, the more innovative the company, more was the likelihood of it being sued. The software and business method patents fared the worst, with costs far outstripping the benefits of patenting. The sector with the worst royalty to costs record is software, with most high technology firms being opposed now to software patents.

10. Apart from the reasons given above, the software patents have the problem of being ill defined and capable of very broad scope. It is difficult to build around as is possible in other areas of technology, precisely because of the vagueness of the claims. Novelty and inventive step is again much more difficult to disprove unlike pharmaceuticals, where it is the molecule with a clearly defined structure which is being patented. No company in the world can conduct patent searches for software, given the number of such patents being filed and the inability to identify the defining characteristic of the product being patented. Therefore, the provision of copyright is more than adequate for protecting IPR in software.

11. The other problem with software patents is that any large software project uses a large number of software components. Any one of them can be subjected litigation claiming patent violations. This would open the company to costly lawsuits and against the interests of all but the biggest global corporations who have deep pockets.

12. Today, even companies such as IBM, Sun, Texas Instruments, CISCO have joined the growing Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community opposing software patents. Most of these companies have publicly stated that they are filing patents only for defensive purposes. Indian law also bars software patents. With regards to proprietary versus FOSS, India needs to analyse and define what should be its trajectory. There is enough grounds to believe that if Indian companies want to move from services model to a product model, software patents and proprietary software will not be the route to take instead, India should promote FOSS, as Brazil and China are doing.

13. Apart from the lack of natural reason for granting software patents, there are potential adverse consequences to the Indian economy in other areas should such patents are granted. The current explosion in bio-pharmaceutical development is increasingly dependent on the ability to perform large-scale data mining from huge amounts of genetic-genomic data. Highly specialised software is developed from pre-existing 'generic' software by bio-informatic technologists for this purpose. Allowing the patenting of the generic basic software will increase the costs of data mining substantially, and will have an extremely adverse impact on the competitive ability of small, knowledge-based entrepreneurial ventures of the kind that India excels in.

14. In India, it has been considered patents should be granted only when public good demands granting of such state protected monopolies. This was the practice also in the UK and the US. It is still the basis of the practice in most countries. It is only in the last few decades that the US, followed by the UK, Japan and now the European Patent Office has tried to change the interpretation of their Patents Acts to expand the scope of patentability. This attempt to enlarge the scope is from their national interest as they hold the largest number of patents. Therefore, their belief that strengthening the patent regime internationally will help their companies to build worldwide monopolies.

15. It is not in India’s national interest or in the interests of its people to expand the scope of state protected monopolies through expanding the patent scope. India’s national interest is best served by restricting the scope of such monopolies. Therefore, the patent regime in India should work on the presumption that patents are to be given only when there is a decisive case for patents. This has been the basis of the Indian Patents Act and is in tune with fundamentals of such legislation world over. It is only the deviation in patent interpretation that has produced a scenario where business methods, software and also mathematical methods are also being patented.

16. The US Supreme Court has now been correcting some of the excesses that has occurred in the US patents interpretation by the Court of Appeals of the Federal Circuit (CAFC). We see no reason why India should change it understanding of patentability following in the footsteps of the US and the EPO and subsequently need to correct such excesses.

17. The US Supreme Court had ruled earlier that Supreme Court has held that patent protection may not be granted for “laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas.” Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175, 185 (1981). The case has frequently been misread as a basis for patenting subject matter that is abstract and intangible. In fact, however, Diehr confirms that intangible subject matter may not be patented, whether directly or indirectly through artful claim drafting.

18. Diehr also re-affirmed its holding in Gottschalk v.Benson, 409 U.S. 63 (1972), that algorithms, or procedures for solving mathematical problems—the building blocks of computer programs—cannot be patented. Likewise, it reaffirmed its holding in Parker v. Flook, 437 U.S. 584 (1984), that an algorithm for computing a number that served as an alarm limit was not patentable by adding insignificant post-solution activity added to a unpatentable principle to a patenable process. Diehr reaffirmed that only tangible processes – in this case vulcanizing rubber-- and not abstract ideas are patentable.

19. In alignment with Benson and Flook, the US Supreme Court in Diehr held that structures or processes must, when considered as a whole, perform functions intended to be covered by patent law in order to be eligible for patent protection. Diehr followed and upheld the core holdings of both Benson and Flook.

20. The US Supreme Court therefore has not pronounced on software patents after Diehr and therefore Diehr still remains the definitive interpretation of software patents in the US.

21. The CAFC deviated from the Supreme Court ruling in Diehr in At&T vs Excel Communications and in State Street Bank. There, CAFC held that though abstract ideas were not patentable, they could be patented if they produced “a useful, concrete and tangible result.” This was inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s earlier rulings on this matter.

22. In a number of recent cases, the US Supreme Court has overruled the CAFC. In all these cases, the US Supreme Court has narrowed the definition of what is patentable. We have already quoted the KSR Vs Teleflex case in this context.

23. It is in this context that the CAFC is revisiting the State Street and AT&T Vs Excel Communications sitting in en banc. Significantly, it has posed the following questions on which it wants to re-examine the two cases. These are:

(1) Whether claim 1 of the [Bilski] patent application claims patent-eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101?

(2) What standard should govern in determining whether a process is patent-eligible subject matter under section 101?

(3) Whether the claimed subject matter is not patent-eligible because it constitutes an abstract idea or mental process; when does a claim that contains both mental and physical steps create patent-eligible subject matter?

(4) Whether a method or process must result in a physical transformation of an article or be tied to a machine to be patent-eligible subject matter under section 101?

(5) Whether it is appropriate to reconsider State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, Inc., 149 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. 1998), and AT&T Corp. v. Excel Communications, Inc., 172 F.3d 1352 (Fed. Cir. 1999), in this case and, if so, whether those cases should be overruled in any respect?

24. Obviously, the US Courts are re-thinking software patents in the light of its difficulty in establishing clear boundaries and tying all future innovation in a morass of litigation. With patent trolls entering the picture, it has become clear to the industry as well as the larger public in the US that the patent system is not being well served by software patents. The CAFC en banc review is only one such indication. Patent reforms are also being discussed in US Congress to address such issues.

25. Therefore, we would urge the patent office to take cognizance off the above and reconsider the paras in the Draft Patent Manual that allows software patents if they are seen to have technical applications.

26. We believe that the lawmakers have done their job and have defined clearly that software patents per se are not admissible in India. It is now incumbent on the patent office to make this clear and not admit such patents.

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US CASES

Diamond v. Diehr,

450 U.S. 175 (1981)

Gottschalk v. Benson,

409 U.S. 63 (1972)

Parker v. Flook,

437 U.S. 584 (1984)

Alappat,

33 F.3d 1526 (Fed. Cir. 1994)

State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, Inc.,

149 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. 1998), 525 U.S. 1093 (1999)

AT&T Corp. v. Excel Communications, Inc.,

172 F.3d 1352 (Fed. Cir. 1999),

KSR International v. Teleflex

127 US 1727 (2007)

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[1] Against Intellectual Monopoly, Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstnew.htm)

[2] Thus, while the US Trade Representative calls for Indian Patent Law to conform to US practices, patent reform is now being pushed aggressively within the US by the high tech industries that are complaining of grant opposition and post grant opposition (as exist in Indian Law) are being put forward as patent reforms in the US Congress. The US Supreme Court has now made combining two existing innovations into a “new” one invalid for patenting (again already barred under Indian Law). The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has now ruled in what is not patentable virtually in the same language for what is not patentable a broken patent system. Both pre according to the Indian Patent Act (Section 3 d, challenged by Novartis in Chennai High Court).

[3] US Patent 6368227, “Method for swinging on a swing”, filed by a five year old child; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1418165.stm, How an Australian lawyer patented the wheel. There are many other examples.

[4] "We build and create by bringing to the tangible and palpable reality around us new works based on instinct, simple logic, ordinary inferences, extraordinary ideas, and sometimes even genius. These advances, once part of our shared knowledge, define a new threshold from which innovation starts once more. And as progress beginning from higher levels of achievement is expected in the normal course, the results of ordinary innovation are not the subject of exclusive rights under the patent laws. Were it otherwise patents might stifle, rather than promote, the progress of useful arts. See U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 8. These premises led to the bar on patents claiming obvious subject matter established in Hotchkiss and codified in §103. Application of the bar must not be confined within a test or formulation too constrained to serve its purpose." KSR International v Telefax US Supreme Court

[5] James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer, Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers

Put Innovators at Risk, Princeton University Press, March 2008.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/software-patents/response-by-knowledge-commons-1

Responding to govt requests is a challenge for online firms: Colin Maclay

praskrishna — 2013-03-15T05:07:10Z

Colin M. Maclay, MD of Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, on challenges in cyberspace.

Colin M. Maclay, MD of Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard mentions about the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore in his interview done by LiveMint. The article was published in LiveMint on March 13, 2013.

Mumbai: Colin M. Maclay, managing director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, says that companies such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. are facing their greatest challenge in responding appropriately to governments that demand user information from them as part of regular practice or to abuse power. In an email interview to Mint on Wednesday, Maclay underscored the policy gaps on the Internet, differences in cyber laws across nations and the forces transforming education, media and technology companies online. He hopes to elaborate on some of these views in Mumbai on Thursday, the concluding day of Ficci Frames,a conclave on the media and entertainment industry that began on Tuesday. Edited excerpts:

How vulnerable are we because of the information shared on email platforms such as Gmail or Yahoomail or on social networks like Facebook?

We are vulnerable in many ways as we share information about ourselves and our friends, sometimes wisely and other times indiscriminately. But this information is later shared with many third-party tracking networks so that the highest bidder can advertise to us the product they think we want. That information is also sold to other interested parties, from businesses to governments. Other business offerings like facial recognition software only make the proposition spookier. Many of them want to responsibly monetize our data typically for advertising or improving their service offerings although we may not all agree on what that means in practice.

Are any laws being considered in the US to protect people’s privacy online?

Privacy around telephony, wiretaps for instance, is much better than Internet-related government requests. There are a host of laws and regulations around privacy in the US, but many of my colleagues would likely say that they are inadequate—not keeping up with the technology, actual use or business practice. They are also in conflict with European laws, which suggests the need to resolve these differences. In this gap, practices like the Google and Twitter Transparency Reports are significant steps forward in telling what governments are actually doing around the world with respect to online privacy and expression. India’s government has a noteworthy presence in these reports, as does the US.

Is it easier for the government to get personal information of suspects’ activity online from Google or Facebook than it would be through an offline search warrant?

There are questionable requests made to companies to provide user information, censor content or other such action by law enforcement agencies in various jurisdictions. Often it is legitimate, and companies should respond accordingly, while at other times, companies may overreach unintentionally, requesting much more information than they need or broader censorship due to their own lack of understanding. In other cases, as part of regular practice or in an informal abuse of power, governments will make requests that do not hold up scrutiny to the rule of law and due process. They may have political or economic motivations, for instance. It’s in discerning between these cases, and figuring out how to respond appropriately, that the companies face their greatest challenge.

Has the freedom of expression been limited by the governments?

The OpenNet initiative, a research collaboration between the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto and the Berkman Center at Harvard, has documented the rise of state-sponsored Internet censorship from a handful of countries a decade ago to over 40 countries today. Beyond technical control, there is a massive increase in copyright-related takedowns that include legitimate takedowns, plus many attempts at economic and political control. There are informal legal and process controls on content. There is also a wide range of self-censorship that’s difficult to document.

How are these companies addressing the issue?

In recognition of the difficult situation, companies such as Google, Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. (Facebook is an observer at present), non-government organizations like Human Rights Watch, Center for Democracy and Technology (CDSA) and the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore and investors like Calvert Investments Inc. and F&C Asset Management Plc, founded the Global Network Initiative (GNI) in October 2008 to protect and advance privacy and freedom of expression online.

Cybercrimes like credit card frauds surface time and again...why is the Internet still not secure enough?

It goes back to beginnings of the Internet, it was built to be open rather than secure. That said, there are a variety of different concerns, including organizations doing an inadequate job of securing the credit card data they hold. That’s their fault and it seems there should be policy solutions that require better security and exact penalties for lapses and bad practice to encourage better behaviour. Credit card fraud online and offline is a problem, and unfortunately it sometimes effectively punishes countries with risk by automatically denying cards—effectively leaving users in those countries without access to e-commerce.

On the good side, top universities around the world now offer online education, How is it transforming the education system?

Like many analog institutions that are adopting digital resources, it’s unclear what will happen. Hopefully it will lower prices, increase learning opportunities, and improve learning all in a sustainable way. We can’t deny, however, the role of in-person interaction whether it’s while seeing friends, dating or doing business and learning is no different.

Looking at trends, laptops began replacing desktops and now tablets are becoming a preferred personal computing device. What’s next?

A decade ago it was laptops or mobiles, and the price of laptops came down, but the mobile network proliferated even faster. Smartphones continued to drop in price and increase in potential, laptops are lighter than ever, tablets have come up, even operating systems are beginning to converge. Now, immersive experiences like Google Glass are coming. It’s hard to know what’s next, but I hope that device convergence will serve as an enabler rather than a limiter.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/livemint-ruchita-saxena-march-13-2013-responding-to-govt-requests-is-a-challenge-for-online-firms

Respite from Internet Censorship?

praskrishna — 2012-08-10T15:51:30Z

Of late, a lot of the blocked websites have started reappearing. So should we sit back and relax? We take a look at how it's not really the start of something beautiful...writes Nimish Sawant. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Published in thinkdigit on June 2, 2012

In April, Chennai based Copyrights Labs got a John Doe order (An order against no one in particular) from Madras High Court which ordered ISPs to block several video hosting websites such as Vimeo and Dailymotion along with a string of torrent sites such as Isohunt and Pirate Bay. The motive was to prevent illegal sharing of the movies 3 and Dhammu. The ISPs went on this whole website blocking spree welcoming users with messages such as, “This website has been blocked as per instructions from the Department of Telecom (DoT)”.

In June, the Madras High Court issued an order which made it mandatory for complainants to provide exact URLs where they find illegal content, such that ISPs could block only that content and not the entire site.

This order is definitely a relief for Indian internet users, who were facing a variety of blocked websites for a couple of months. In the May-June period there was a lot of media coverage around Internet censorship and then there was the much-hyped Anonymous protest (http://goo.gl/YCQod) that saw a not-so-great participation. Just like most media stories, it is slowly departing from the public conciousness. So does this mean our censorship woes are behind us?

Far from it.

The dark cloud of Intermediaries Guidelines
The Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011 were added to the IT Act 2000. According to it, the intermediaries (website, domain registrar, blog owner and so on) guidelines allows the government to pull up any website that hosts “objectionable” content. It gives anyone the right to send “content removal notice” to an intermediary, asking it to be removed within 36 hours. Terms describing such content - grossly harmful, harassing, blasphemous, defamatory, obscene - are those that are open to interpretation. So, Facebook can be hauled up for derogatory content or pages on its site. Hell, even if you own a blog and someone else posts a derogatory comment, you can be pulled up.

This is a rather smart move by the government to force self-censorship down our throats. Just try imagining - Every 60 seconds: on YouTube there are 48 hours worth of videos uploaded; Wordpress users publish 347 blogs; Twitter users send over 100,000 tweets among others. (Source: http://goo.gl/U7qT8) How on earth is monitoring such a vast amount of data even possible?

Karnika Seth, Cyberlaw Expert	"Any content which is illegal can be blocked by ISP or on directions of a court.A person who uploads illegal content does not have a right to claim that it should not be blocked. But if harmless content is blocked arbitrarily by government or by an ISP, a person can approach the court for a direction that content should not be blocked from public access. No specific section in IT Act entitles a person to sue in such cases . However freedom of speech and expression is our fundamental right guaranteed under Art.19 of the Constitution of India and it is our constitutional right to seek legal redress for its protection by approaching the court."

Karnika Seth, Cyberlaw Expert

"Any content which is illegal can be blocked by ISP or on directions of a court.A person who uploads illegal content does not have a right to claim that it should not be blocked. But if harmless content is blocked arbitrarily by government or by an ISP, a person can approach the court for a direction that content should not be blocked from public access. No specific section in IT Act entitles a person to sue in such cases . However freedom of speech and expression is our fundamental right guaranteed under Art.19 of the Constitution of India and it is our constitutional right to seek legal redress for its protection by approaching the court."

Every site has internal checks and balances in the form of a 'Report Abuse' option, where users raise flags against content which they may find objectionable and the site takes a call. But with the intermediary rules, the content has to be removed within 36 hours. And here's the kicker – the content can be removed without informing the owner or giving him or her a chance to defend. A political cartoon website cartoonsagainstcorruption.com was a victim of such rules. In March this year, Rajya Sabha MP, P. Rajeeve, had moved a motion calling for the annulment of the intermediaries rules sometime in April. This motion, as would be expected, was defeated by a voice vote.

“Any content which is illegal can be blocked by the ISP or on directions of a court. A person who uploads illegal content does not have a right to claim that it should not be blocked. But if harmless content is blocked arbitrarily by government or by an ISP, a person can approach the court for a direction that content should not be blocked from public access,” said cyberlaw expert Karnika Seth. When asked if there is a clause in the IT Act which enables a person to drag the government or the ISP for blocking access to their harmless content on the web, Seth said, “No specific section in the IT Act entitles a person to sue in such cases . However, freedom of speech and expression is our fundamental right guaranteed under Art.19 of the Constitution of India and it is our constitutional right to seek legal redress for its protection by approaching the court.”

So what should one do if his or her content is blocked due to the blanket ban on websites? “If I am blocked access to my content on the web (say by blocking sites such as Vimeo or Blogspot for instance) I should file an appeal against the John Doe order in the higher court or to the division bench of High court if earlier order has been passed by single bench of the same High court. These provisions are there for any citizen in Procedural Law of India. The IT Act, 2000 need not be invoked,” says Advocate Prashant Mali, President, Cyber Law Consulting.

Google Transparency report clearly established a link between internet censorship and the government. According to the report, between January and June 2011 Google received 1739 requests for disclosure of user data from the Indian government whereas from July to December 2011, the number of requests by the government went up to 2207. Thankfully Google's compliance rate has come down, but the requests will keep increasing. And this is just Google products we are talking about. Is it then right for just the government to go ahead and draft the rules regarding internet usage? Are there provisions for you, the user to play a part in drafting of these rules. According to Advocate Mali, laws are generally put up for debate on various Government websites. But in the case of the Intermediaries Guidelines, the government used the two-thirds majority to pass the rules.

According to Sunil Abraham, Director, Centre for Internet and Society – a Bangalore-based internet advocacy group, we are very far in terms of Internet policies. “Dr. Gulshan Rai of CERT-IN has not taken even the public feedback process seriously and does not hold public consultations. This is very unlike TRAI, the telecoms regulator that has a very sophisticated approach towards transparent and participatory policy formulation.” He says that in India there is little transparency in some areas of policy articulation and our representatives do not seem sufficiently interested in protecting the public interest.

Also according to Adv. Mali, the recent Madras High Court directive asking the ISPs to block only the ‘pirated content’ and not the entire website, is just half the battle won for the ISPs. “If ISP's feel they have won, then that's just half the victory, because if they don't implement the order with full might and even if one copyright gets infringed because of there weak enforcement, then it would amount to Contempt of Court which will land ISP's into soup,” he says.

“The Madras High Court judgement which essentially directs ISPs to block “pirated content”, and not the website as a whole, is a good judgment with respect to Internet users, but implementing it selectively would be a mammoth task for ISP's. If ISP's feel they have won, then it's just half the battle won, because if they don't implement the order with full might and even if one copyright gets infringed because of weak enforcement, then it would amount to Contempt of Court which will land ISP's into soup."

Advocate Prashant Mali, President, Cyber Law Consulting

Is the Anonymous way, the right way?
In June, we saw the global hactivist organisation - Anonymous attacking a string of Government websites and that of ISPs such as Reliance communications, which had blocked access to websites. On June 9, there was a street protest across various metros in India. While the participation was not very encouraging, the sympathy for what Anonymous hackers were doing to those opposing Internet censorship was immense.

According to Advocate Mali, though the agenda of Anonymous was good, their means of achieving that end were wrong. “One cannot put a gun on the Government’s head in a democracy. If they keep doing this, they will be outlawed. If Anonymous really wants to work for the netizens, they should find better ways to protest instead of those which are cognizable cyber crimes in India.” said Mali.

According to Abraham, Anonymous are embracing the civil disobedience movement to protest against unjust laws. He feels that it is pertinent for Anonymous to retain the moral high ground. “Breaking into servers, leaks of personal information and defacement of websites is both illegal and also unlikely to win them more supporters from within the policy formulation space,” concurs Abraham.

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet & Society

“The government ie. the government in power, does only frame subsidiary rules. For example – the draconian rules related to reasonable security measures, cyber cafes and intermediaries were drafted in April last year. The main Act in this case the Information Technology Act is framed in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Even though the elected government may dominate the proceedings, if they have a clear majority, the opposition parties must debate every detail especially in laws that affect our civil liberties. Unfortunately, since the Internet is not used by the majority of the population it is politically still an insignificant issue. The private sector cannot frame laws that regulate itself – that would be a contradiction in terms. Citizens cannot be asked to vote in referendums each time laws have to be passed, that would just be too slow. Transparency representative democracy is the online option – unfortunately in India there is little transparency in some areas of policy articulation and our representatives don't seem to be sufficiently interested in protecting the public interest.”

Where do we go from here?
So it is safe to say that even though the issue of censorship is not making headlines everyday, it will never will be behind us. “This is just a temporary lull in the storm. Governments are always keen to crack down on free speech and privacy online,” feels Abraham. According to him, projects such as Unique Identification (UID) and National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) means the death of anonymity and pseudonymity for Internet and mobile users in the country.

On the other hand, Adv. Mali says that so long as the Intermediaries guidelines are part of the IT Act, it will only mean bad news for regular netizens. “Till the rules are effective, censorship and blocking would be a weapon in the hands of the Government, even though it may violate certain Fundamental Rights enshrined by Indian Constitution to Indian Citizens,” he said.

“Indian Internet users have to be very vigilant – if not, we will loose all our rights and freedoms one by one,” warns Abraham.

We can just hope that the issue does not get completely out of hand.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-thinkdigit-com-nimish-sawant-02-06-2012-respite-from-internet-censorship

Resources

pranesh — 2009-10-20T03:29:16Z

A collection of resources that will help one navigate through the arguments and evidence for and against the Indian "Bayh-Dole" bill.

PUPFIP

Bayh-Dole

Technology Transfer

Innovation's Golden Goose (The Economist)

Improving Innovation(The Economist)

Scientific Culture

Patents and America's Universities(The Economist)

When Academia Puts Profits Ahead of Wonder(The New York Times)

Bayhing for blood or Doling out cash?(The Economist)

Evaluative Pieces

University Licensing under Bayh-Dole: What are the Issues and Evidence?(Thursby and Thursby)

Is Bayh-Dole Good for Developing Countries? Lessons from the US Experience(So et al.)

The Law of Unintended Consequences(Fortune Magazine)

The Growth of patenting and licensing by U.S. universities and the Bayh-Dole Act (Mowery et al.)

Overall Assessment of the Bayh-Dole Act (Nelson, Mowery, et al.)

General Resources

Joint Ventures and Intellectual Property(Andreas Panagopoulos)

Patents vs. Other Knowledge Transfer(Agrawal and Henderson)

Incentives Structure and Licensing Success(Dan Elfenbein)

University Licensing and Research Behavior(Lach and Schankerman)

Open Science and Private Property(Paul David)

IP Alternatives

New Approaches to Filling the Gap in TB Drug Discovery (Casenghi, Cole and Nathan)

The Role of Prizes in Developing Low-Cost Point-of-Care Rapid Diagnostic Tests and Better Drugs for TB(James Love)

How to boost R&D for essential drugs and diagnostics

Scrooge and intellectual property rights (BMJ January 2006)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/publications/pupfip/resources

Resisting Revolutions

praskrishna — 2012-05-29T10:28:17Z

Nishant Shah's peer reviewed journal article was published in Democracy, Volume 55, Issue 2.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/resisting-revolutions.pdf

Resisting Internet Censorship: Strategies for Furthering Freedom of Expression in India

praskrishna — 2012-06-21T05:29:02Z

The Centre for Internet and Society and the Foundation for Media Professionals invite you to an open discussion on 'Resisting Internet Censorship: Strategies for Furthering Freedom of Expression in India' at the Bangalore International Centre on April 21, 2012, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. The discussion will be moderated by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.

Participants include:

P. Rajeeve, Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha, CPI(M))
Rajeev Chandrashekar, Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha, Independent) [tbc]
V.R. Sudarshan, Member of Legislative Council, Karnataka (Congress)
Na. Vijayshankar, Cyber Law College
Mahesh Murthy, Pinstorm
B.G. Mahesh, OneIndia.in
Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Centre for Law and Policy Research
Siddharth Narain, Alternative Law Forum
Ram Bhat, Maraa
S. Senthil, FSMK [tbc]
Deepa Dhanraj [tbc]
Arati Chokshi, People's Union for Civil Liberties (Karnataka) [tbc]

Immediate Background:

Member of Parliament P. Rajeeve has introduced a motion in the Rajya Sabha calling for the Internet censorship law passed last year ("Intermediary Guidelines Rules") to be annulled. This motion will be taken up once the Budget Session 2012 reconvenes, and will need the support of the majority of both Houses to be passed. Apart from this, we have seen multiple cases in the past few months of flagrant abuse of the speech laws, especially the Information Technology Act, including the removal of CartoonsAgainstCorruption.com, the arrest of M. Karthik, a 20-year-old atheist from Hyderabad, and of Prof. Ambikesh Mahapatra from Kolkata for 'defamatory' cartoons of Mamata Banerjee, both under s.66A of the Information Technology Act. We need to develop strategies to combat this over-eagerness by authorities to abuse speech laws.

More Detailed Background:

Internet censorship has been in India ever since VSNL brought internet connectivity to Indians in the mid-1990s, when websites were blocked through executive fiat. In 2000 the Information Technology Act was passed, and while it had a provision on electronic publication of obscene materials, it did not contain any provisions for blocking of websites. Still, Rules were made under the Act under which the government blocked numerous websites.

In 2008 the Act was amended, bringing more transparency to the censorship regime. Unfortunately, cases like the CartoonsAgainstCorruption.com and the disparity between censorship statistics published by Google and the official statistics revealed under RTI by the Department of Information Technology show a large amount of extra-legal censorship happening.

In February 2011, the DIT published draft rules that were severely criticised by many MPs, including Rajeev Chandrashekar, P. Rajeeve, Mahendra Mohan, and Kumar Deepak Das, organizations including CIS, Software Freedom Law Centre, IAMAI, and companies like Google India. Many MPs, including Rajeev Chandrashekar and P. Rajeeve, raised concerns about the draft. In April 2011 disregarding all these concerns, the government pressed ahead with the Rules. These rules allowed any person to get content removed from the Internet by writing to any 'intermediary' (like Rediff, BSNL, Google, Facebook, etc.) within 36 hours, with no questions asked, and no intimation to the content owner (hence no question of challenge), and once again made internet censorship as unaccountable as it was pre-2008, only with the power to censor in the hands of every citizen, rather than just a few government officials.

In May 2011, due to the backlash in the media, with negative editorials in prominent newspapers, Mr. Kapil Sibal indicated in an interview that the rules would be revisited. From August 2011 onwards there was a crackdown on several web companies, including Indiatimes, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Facebook, with the government asking them to proactively monitor online content and remove what it deemed objectionable material. Since then, a number of egregious cases of censorship through filing of intimidatory FIRs and lawsuits have been happening.

The Organisers

The Foundation for Media Professionals is an independent, not-for-profit organisation, set up in April 2008, by a group of Indian journalists with diverse media backgrounds and work experiences. Though we are traditionally referred to as journalists, we have decided to call ourselves differently to emphasise the importance we place on professionalism, so that we can be true to our vocation as watchdogs of society.

This is not a forum for the media executive who might be into marketing, management or space selling. Nor is membership open to amateurs, for whom journalism is a hobby and not the main source of income. As journalists we cannot be politically neutral. Ours is not a sterile craft that seeks merely to entertain or inform. We confess to just one prejudice: liberty. In pursuing that principle, the Foundation shall be non-partisan, while welcoming members of all political persuasions.

Our intention is to strive towards the nobility of our calling and its high-minded purpose. We will try to inculcate and amplify best practices. We will debate issues impinging on our profession. We shall recognise and reward excellence.

The Centre for Internet and Society was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different research programmes on topics such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, Telecom, Digital Natives and Digital Humanities.

The programmes have resulted in research outputs: monographs such as Re: Wiring Bodies, Porn: Law, Video, Technology, Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities, Archives and Access and the Last Cultural Mile; reports such as Digital Natives with a Cause? A Report, Digital Natives with a Cause? Thinkathon: Position Papers, Open Government Data Study, and Online Video Environment in India ; analyses such as WIPO Treaty for the Print Disabled, WIPO Broadcast Treaty, and Copyright Amendment Bill ; books such as Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? and e-Accessibility Handbook for Persons with Disabilities; a reader on the Wikipedia titled Critical Point of View; other outputs such as Banking, Telecommunications, Consumer Protection, IT Act, Limitations, Copyright, Internet Protocol, Media, Sexual Minorities and UID.

We have participated in forums like WIPO, FICCI, IGF, and gave policy submissions to various ministries and departments of the Government of India including the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Department of Information Technology, and Department of Telecom on policies like NIA Bill, IT Act, National Policy on Electronics, Cyber Café Rules, Security Practices Rules, Intermediary Due Diligence Rules, and Interoperability Framework for e-Governance.

VIDEOS

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/resisting-internet-censorship

Research Studies on Indian Language Wikimedia Projects 2019-21

sneha — 2022-10-21T12:59:55Z

This is a compilation of the final reports from a series of short-term studies undertaken by the CIS-A2K team in 2019-2021, on an array of topics related to Indian language Wikimedia projects. The projects were undertaken by Subodh Kulkarni, Bodhisattwa Mandal, Bhuvana Meenakshi Koteeswaran, Ananth Subray, Satpal Dandiwal and Nitesh Gill, with research oversight and editorial support by Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and internal review by Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Ambika Tandon.

See the full report on Wikimedia Commons here

Click to download the full report here

Wikipedia and its many sister projects have been rich sites of study for researchers across the world for many years now. The online encyclopedia presents a microcosm of the real world in terms of the dynamics of knowledge production and use, including content and infrastructure, and community interaction among many other things. Research about Wikimedia projects and platforms has been undertaken in various languages, and from multidisciplinary perspectives, as illustrated by the research index on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki, and several important publications over the last several years. Research on Indian languageWikimedia projects and platforms, and on topics related to the sub-continent have also emerged significantly over the last several years.However, as understood in the course of the studies in this compilation as well, awareness about such research within the communities itself remains limited. While there is a lot of important work being undertaken on topics relevant to Indian Wikimedia projects, often by researchers who are Wikimedians themselves, factors such as dissemination beyond academic spaces, and accessibility in terms of language and context seem to also affect their availability to the larger communities, and in terms of implementation of learnings and recommendations.

The six short-term research studies undertaken by the Access to Knowledge team over 2019–2021 were therefore initiated as a pilot, an initial foray into the space of research on Wikimedia projects in India. Based on the recommendations of the Wikimedia Foundation, this work was undertaken primarily to tap into new areas of work, while also drawing upon existing expertise at CIS, and in order to build the capacity of the team. With these broader motivations in mind, the research was structured with the following objectives to:

Identify knowledge gaps, challenges, and opportunities in different aspects of content creation and participation in Indian language Wikimedia projects.
Develop a better understanding of systemic issues such as gender bias in Indian language communities, access to and reuse of cultural content, open learning in multilingual classrooms, and specific experiences of content creation within Wikimedia communities in India and associated initiatives.
Develop recommendations and best practices towards addressing existing challenges and optimising available resources for the larger free knowledge movement.

The studies in this compilation therefore examine different aspects of Wikimedia platforms and projects in India, in close alignment with existing work in the programme. These include the gender gap in Indian Wikimedia communities, creating multilingual and open educational platforms and resources, focus on specific projects such as GLAM and Wikidata, and efforts and challenges with content creation, access and outreach in specific language communities.

Working on these studies has been a learning experience, especially given the diverse contexts in which the projects are located, and the capacities and interests of the researchers themselves. The design of the studies was also therefore developed and modified to build on existing capacities within the team, and its learnings from previous years of working with various language communities. Capacity-building for team members on research design, methods, fieldwork and documentation was mostly done through close individual supervision and collaborative work. The methods used were largely qualitative, and ranged from interviews, literature reviews, data visualisations, focused group discussions and comparative analyses. The effort was also to try and capture the scale and diversity of the nature of work being undertaken in different Indian language communities through these projects. There were several challenges as well, beginning with framing the research questions and project design in a way that they were accessible to a wider community of people who would be engaged in contributing their inputs towards the work. Process-related challenges, such as translation of interview questionnaires into Indian languages revealed several interesting gaps, such as the lack of technical terms related to digitization or open access in these languages. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 led to restrictions on field visits, thus effectively hampering in person conversations and easier access to community members.

There have been several learnings in the course of working on these studies, key among them being questions of awareness, relevance and impact. The lack of existing and easily accessible research (including those outside academic work) on several areas of Wikimedia in the Indian context has been a limitation in many ways, offering little in terms of available knowledge and best practices to work with. The limited awareness about, and imagined relevance of research in the regular work of communities has also been an impediment. As illustrated by learnings from a short research needs assessment carried out earlier this year, few community members were aware of research on Wikimedia projects being undertaken in India, and on a global scale. More importantly, there needs to be a conversation on its relevance to their own work, and to the larger movement. An effective communication strategy for research work, in different Indian languages, would perhaps address some of these gaps. A closely related question is also that of impact. The studies in this collection largely focus on short-term impact, through best practices and recommendations that may be developed through the research studies. While this is definitely a pragmatic approach, often the interest in a problem-solution design may look at research purely from an instrumental lens to identify quick solutions and their implementation, without a critical take on exploring and understanding larger, systemic or structural gaps that may be contributing to the problems itself. Going forward, it would be imperative therefore to identify areas of research, and build processes of research design that may address these challenges. Given the dynamic nature of Wikimedia, its platforms and communities, it is important to identify immediate gaps and possible solutions, but also to speak precisely to this aspect of long-term impact and relevance, to both current areas of work and the growth of the larger movement. We hope the studies in this compilation offer some insights towards these, and many more interesting questions related to research on Wikimedia and the free knowledge movement in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-studies-on-indian-language-wikimedia-projects

Research Publishing: Is ‘One Nation, One Subscription’ Pragmatic Reform for India?

sinha — 2021-04-28T17:09:14Z

Anubha Sinha examines the feasibility of the proposed 'One Nation, One Subscription' approach in the draft national Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (2020) on access to scientific literature. This article was first published in The Wire Science on October 23, 2020.

The story of open access (OA) publishing in India has been a chequered one. While we have had some progress with institutional initiatives, the landscape remains fractured without a national OA mandate. And now some reports suggest that the Indian government is considering striking a ‘one nation, one subscription’ deal with scholarly publishers for access to paywalled research for all of India’s citizens. Only last year, India had decided against joining Plan S. K. VijayRaghavan has been at the helm of these decisions, as the principal scientific advisor to the Government of India.

OA refers to the level of access different people have to a published paper, like a scientific paper. Typically, a researcher submits their manuscript to a journal to consider for publication. If the paper passes peer-review, the journal publishes the paper in its pages, and online. In the ‘conventional’ research publishing model, a reader who wishes to read the paper pays a fee to the journal to do so. In the (gold) OA model, the journal makes its money by having the researcher – or their funder – pay to have their paper published.

While it is heartening to see the momentum towards settling on a suitable OA approach, the ‘one nation, one subscription’ scheme is a curious proposition for India. A consortium of Indian science academies had recommended it last year. The scheme entails the Government of India to negotiate for and purchase a single, unified subscription from a consortium of publishers of scientific books and journals, after which the books and papers will be available to all government-funded institutions as well as all tax-payers.

Around the world, this scheme has been implemented in Uruguay and Egypt, while some European countries have adopted versions of it. Experts around the world have suggested that the model could be a feasible interim solution for developing countries. Note that both Egypt and Uruguay obtained financial assistance from the World Bank to secure their deals.

In Uruguay, since 2009, citizens have enjoyed free access to (otherwise) paywalled scientific and technological journals and platforms via the online platform Portal Timbó. However, some content remains available only to scientific, academic, and educational institutions and researchers. The 2019 budget for Portal Timbó was $2.3 million (Rs 16.94 crore).

Egypt launched its Egyptian Knowledge Bank (EKB) initiative in 2015. EKB provides a population of 92 million people access to journals, e-books and archives from multiple publishers across the sciences, humanities and cultural disciplines, and has certainly benefited society. However, the question remains whether incurring an annual expense of $64 million, in 2017 (Rs 416.47 crore), in subscription costs is justified. In both Egypt and Uruguay, it is not clear if all material is readable immediately upon publication or whether there is a delay.

So what could a ‘one nation, one subscription’ deal look like for India?

Currently, India spends Rs 1,500 crore a year to read research via journal subscriptions (about $205 million). So while a shift to nationwide subscription could yield a low per capita cost of access, our limited ICT infrastructure and digital divide remain barriers to unlocking the full potential of the deal. It is equally crucial to ensure that the deal covers key journals and databases – which may have to be negotiated with publishers with different types of collections across multiple disciplines.

Further, and perhaps more importantly, a nationwide subscription deal will not solve for an uneven OA publishing culture among Indian researchers. A rough calculation suggests India’s annual publishing spend is Rs 985 crore ($134.5 million), including article-processing charges (APCs) for both OA and hybrid-OA journals (which have a mix of OA and ‘conventional’ publishing policies). While a common national subscription could potentially lower the cost of reading research, we don’t know if authors will still have to pay APCs to publish their papers in publications covered by the deal.

Irrespective of how the deal plays out, the Indian research community is currently divided over the issue of paying to publish. Some researchers and disciplines argue that APCs should not be the basis for ruling out publication in a journal – the choice should rather be balanced against the journal’s disciplinary relevance and its ‘prestige’ factor (captured in a controversial metric known as the journal impact factor). In India, publishing charges are typically fronted by government grants and private funders, and it costs Rs 70,000 on average to publish in OA journals.

On the other hand, OA supporters and several institutional initiatives advocate ‘green’ OA – which requires posting the preprint version of papers in an open online repository, often immediately after publication. It remains to be seen whether India will unanimously decide to adopt green OA.

We also need to deliberate further as to what a nationwide subscription would mean for the country’s and the world’s OA movement. While a ‘one national, one subscription’ plan would appear to temporarily alleviate the financial problem of access, how far can it really go towards solving for legal and technical barriers of access? For example, the reader may still not have legal permissions to reuse the article, or reuse may be prevented technically by anti-copy measures. Or should we brush these concerns aside since the deal is somewhat of an incremental reform for India?

The OA movement was conceived to address global inequality in accessing scientific research. Would India’s position and contribution to the movement – as a large consumer and producer of scientific research – get sidelined? It appears that the nationwide subscription deal could feature in India’s upcoming ‘Science, Technology and Innovation Policy’ as well. Then, to address the gaps, it is necessary to add other policy solutions to complement the deal’s impact. The goal for a national science policy should be to create a sustainable, longer term environment that improves the quality of access and production of scientific research, and does so in alignment with the values of OA.

Access this article on The Wire Science here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/research-publishing-is-2018one-nation-one-subscription2019-pragmatic-reform-for-india

Research papers will be available in public domain

praskrishna — 2012-02-17T05:38:36Z

IIT-Madras intends to make circle of knowledge complete, writes Vasudha Venugopal in this article published in the Hindu on 15 February 2012. Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam is quoted in the article.

2012-13 was declared the year of science by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year, and there is a lot of effort being made all over the country to not only intensify the quantity and quality of research but also ensure greater access for all. For instance, IIT-Madras plans to make available its research papers in all disciplines online, in the public domain. The institute already provides e-learning through online web and video courses in engineering, science and humanities streams through NPTEL.

The attempt now is to convince faculty members to upload their research papers into the institution's repository, says Mangala Sunder Krishnan, Web Coordinator (NPTEL). The move will not only benefit students and faculty members but will also help the circle of knowledge to be complete, he says.

What IIT- Madras plans to do is follow an Open Access policy that would make the access of journals and scientific research public and many other educational organisations plan to follow suite. “Most research publications stay locked up in commercial journals and are inaccessible to many. Open Access is the best way to ensure that research produced in the developing world gets wider visibility,” says Francis Jayakanth, a library-trained scientific assistant based at the National Centre for Science Information, the information centre of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Mr. Jayakanth has been instrumental in creating an institutional repository ePrints@IISc that has over 32,000 publications by researchers.

Subbiah Arunachalam, distinguished fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society explains: “A research produced by the Tuberculosis Research Centre in Chennai which would be of great relevance to researchers, say in a university in Maharashtra, may not be even noticed by the scientists there. Both groups receive funds from the same source - Government of India - and yet what one does is not easily accessible to the other. “Open Access would bridge that gap and make information available to everyone,” he says.

Open Access repositories would help authors place their papers in an interoperable institutional open access archive and anyone with an Internet connection can access it. Researchers say that in most reputed journals, it takes almost six months to get a paper published, and most insist that the paper is removed from the internal repository of the author's institution once it is published. “But 70 per cent of the publishers are now fine with the authors taking the pre-print of their paper uploaded in the repository. And since in open access, every thing is peer reviewed, the quality is never compromised,” says Mr. Jayakanth.

While institutions such as IIT- Madras subscribe to over 2,000 journals, many colleges under Anna University and University of Madras have access to just about 1,500 journals. “There is almost Rs.10 -12 lakh that the institution spends on journal subscriptions so unless there is funding, many self-financed colleges prefer not to subscribe to journals and go for a few mandatory ones prescribed by AICTE. Students and researchers have no way to acquaint themselves with recent updates,” says D. Krishnan, professor, Anna University.

Even if you go through consortiums, you have to spend Rs.20 lakh which many smaller R&D organisations cannot afford to, adds P. Ramamoorthy, librarian at Sameer- Centre for Electromagnetics, a government-funded research agency. “The restrictions imposed by many commercial publishers do not allow one to legally share the published output of his result with his colleague. Open access will relive authors of such hassles,” he says.

The original article was published in the Hindu

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/research-papers-in-public-domain

Research Advisory Network Meeting

praskrishna — 2014-07-03T06:39:38Z

All sessions will take place at the OECD Headquarters, located at 2 Rue André Pascal, 75016, Paris, France. Sunil Abraham is participating in the event.

For agenda and other details, click here.

Hosting of the Event

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has agreed to host this meeting of the Global Commission on Internet Governance’s Research Advisory Network (RAN). The OECD will provide meeting space and logistical support, and is committed to engaging the project in the development of evidence-based policy recommendations for the future of Internet governance.

Meeting Participant List

Special Guests

James Kaplan
Bill Woodcock

OECD Staff

Aaron Martin
Anne Carblanc
Sam Paltridge
Alexia Gonzalez Fanfalone
Lorrayne Porciuncula

Commission Secretariat

Caroline Baylon
Eric Jardine
Mark Raymond
Aaron Shull
Brenda Woods

Research Advisory Network Biographies

Sunil Abraham / @sunil_abraham

Sunil Abraham is the executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS). CIS is a five year old policy and academic research organization focusing on accessibility, access to knowledge, Internet governance, telecom, digital natives and digital humanities. He founded Mahiti in 1998, a social enterprise that provides technology to civil society for which he was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999. Between June 2004 and June 2007, Sunil also managed the International Open Source Network, a project of UNDP serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Subimal Bhattacharjee / @subimal

Subimal Bhattacharjee is an independent consultant on defence and cyber issues, working primarily with government and private sector advisory panels in India. He is the former India country director for General Dynamics International Corporation. Subimal is a columnist and internationally respected speaker on issues of Internet governance and cyber security.

Bertrand de La Chapelle / @bdelachapelle

Bertrand de La Chapelle is the Director of the Internet & Jurisdiction Project, a global multistakeholder dialogue process developing a due process framework to handle the diversity of national laws in cross-border online spaces. He served as a Director on the ICANN Board from 2010 to 2013. From 2006 to 2010, he was France’s Thematic Ambassador and Special Envoy for the Information Society, participating in all WSIS follow-up activities and Internet governance processes, including in particular the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), and was a Vice-Chair of ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). Bertrand is a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique, Sciences Po Paris and Ecole Nationale d’Administration.

Laura DeNardis / @LauraDeNardis

A scholar of Internet architecture and governance, Dr. Laura DeNardis is a CIGI senior fellow and professor at American University. She is an affiliated fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project and previously served as its Executive Director. She is the Director of Research for the Global Commission on Internet Governance and is the author of The Global War for Internet Governance (Yale University Press 2014).

Patrik Fältström / @patrikhson

Patrik Fältström is head of research and development at Netnod. Previously, he was a distinguished engineer at Cisco, technical specialist at Tele2, systems manager at the Royal Institute of Technology, researcher at Bunyip Information Systems and a programmer in the Royal Swedish Navy. He has been a member of numerous advisory groups and investigations related to the Internet, both public and private sector. Patrik holds an M.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Stockholm.

Paul Fehlinger / @PaulFehlinger

Paul Fehlinger is the co-founder and manager of the Internet & Jurisdiction Project, a global multi-stakeholder dialogue process developing a due process framework to enable the coexistence of diverse national laws in cross-border online spaces. He started working on Internet governance at Sciences Po Paris and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. He is since actively engaged in the UN Internet Governance Forum, EuroDIG and other global Internet fora.

Fen Hampson

Fen Osler Hampson is a distinguished fellow and director of the Global Security & Politics Program at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). He has served as director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and is concurrently chancellor’s professor at Carleton University. He is the recipient of various awards and honours and is a frequent commentator and contributor to international media.

Clem Herman / @clemherman

Clem Herman is a senior lecturer in the Department of Computing and Communications at the UK Open University, and was previously director of the Manchester Women’s Electronic Village Hall (WEVH) pioneering the use of ICTs to empower women. She has published widely on gender issues in technology and is the founder and editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Gender Science and Technology.

Konstantinos Komaitis / @kkomaitis

Konstantinos Komaitis is a policy advisor at the Internet Society, focusing primarily on the field of digital content and intellectual property. Before joining the Internet Society in July 2012, he was a senior lecturer at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Konstantinos holds a Ph.D. in law and his thesis focused on issues of intellectual property and the Internet, with particular focus on the intersection of trademarks and domain names. He is the author of The Current State of Domain Name Regulation.

Young-eum Lee

Young-eum Lee is a professor in the Department of Media Arts and Sciences at Korea National Open University. She has been involved in various Internet governance policy making processes of the Korean domain name .kr at KISA (KRNIC), and has also been involved in global Internet governance activities at ICANN. Since 2003, she has been a council member of the ccNSO representing .kr in the Asia-Pacific region. Young-eum received her M.A. in Communication Science at Northwestern University and her doctorate in Communication from the University of Michigan.

Tim Maurer

Tim Maurer is a research fellow at the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute. He focuses on cyberspace and international affairs, namely Internet governance, cyber-security, and human rights online. In October 2013 and February 2014, he spoke about cyber-warfare at the United Nations. Tim’s research has been published and featured by national and international print, radio and television media, including Harvard University, Foreign Policy, CNN and Slate among others. He conducts academic research as a non-resident research fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.

Emily Taylor / @etaylaw

Emily Taylor is a renowned expert in the field of Internet law and governance, and provides research services in areas including security, IPv6 deployment, internationalised domain names, the domain name industry, and global policy development. Her roles in the Internet sphere include chair of the WhoIs Review Committee for ICANN 2012, member of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group to the IGF (2006-2012), director of Synetergy (providing Sunrise Dispute resolution services to the largest gTLD applicant, Donuts), and several ongoing non-executive directorships.

Rolf H. Weber

Rolf H. Weber is professor for civil, commercial and European law at the University of Zurich Law School. Since 2008, he is the director of the Information and Communication Law Center at the University of Zurich, a member (now Vice-Chairman) of the Steering Committee of the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet) as well as a member of the European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG). Since 2009, he has been a member of the High-level Panel of Advisers of the Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technologies and Development (GAID) and author of frequent publications on Internet Governance.

Andrew Wyckoff

Andrew W. Wyckoff is the director of the OECD’s Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry. Prior to the OECD, he was a program manager of the Information, Telecommunications and Commerce program of the US Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, an economist at the US National Science Foundation and a programmer at the Brookings Institution. Andrew holds a Master of Public Policy from the JFK School of Government, Harvard University.

Special Guest Biographies

James M. Kaplan

James M. Kaplan is a partner at McKinsey & Company in New York. He convenes McKinsey's global practices in IT infrastructure and cyber-security. He has assisted leading institutions in implementing cyber-security strategies, conducting cyber-war games, optimizing enterprise infrastructure environments and exploiting cloud technologies. James led McKinsey's collaboration with the World Economic Forum on "Risk & Responsibility in a Hyper-Connected World," which was presented at the Forum's recent Annual Meeting in Davos. He published on a variety of technology topics in the McKinsey Quarterly, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Harvard Business Review Blog Network.

Bill Woodcock

Bill Woodcock is the executive director of Packet Clearing House, the international non-governmental organization that builds and supports critical Internet infrastructure, including Internet exchange points and the core of the domain name system. Since entering the Internet industry in 1985, Bill has helped establish more than one hundred and fifty Internet exchange points. In the early 1990s, Bill developed the anycast routing technique that now protects the domain name system. In 2002 he co-founded INOC-DBA, the security-coordination hotline system that interconnects the network operations centers of more than three thousand ISPs around the world. And in 2007, Bill was one of the two international liaisons deployed by NSP-Sec to the Estonian CERT during the Russian cyber-attack.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/research-advisory-network-meeting

Report: Global Intellectual Property Convention 2015

rohini — 2015-06-21T13:36:18Z

The Global Intellectual Property Convention was held in January 2015 in Mumbai. Interns Anna Liz Thomas and Nayana Dasgupta assisted with the making of this report.

Conference Schedule [PDF]

National IPR Policy Recommendations [PDF]

Harshvardhan Lale, Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC)

Digital piracy in India

Special 301 Report:

India is second among 10 countries on the Priority Watch List of the United States Trade Representatives (USTR), according to the Special 301 Report published in May 2014. Once every two years, the US, through its trade representatives releases the Special 301 Report, which deals with piracy across the globe, especially in the places where US business interests lie. Though the police conduct at least 25 raids every week across India, it has made no difference to the rate of piracy in the country. When a couple of software publishers entered India, they were very confident that none of their products, in any shape and form, could be pirated in India. I took one of the heads of Compliance to the [pirated goods] market where we got a product worth Rs. 5 crores for Rs. 100.

The Special 301 Report also suggests that none of the previous governments or government bodies in India have taken any initiative whatsoever to ensure that even the products used in the government offices are not pirated. According to US government agencies (2013), there were serious difficulties in attaining constructive engagement on IPR issues with the UPA government.

Video piracy:

India is rated as one of the countries with the highest incidence of video piracy by MPDA, well above Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Greece, and Peru. We [supporters of stricter IP] are now trying to get the digital rights management provision in the [Indian] Copyright Law [redacted], but that is still in the future.

Broadcast piracy:

A few Indian television channels are facing this problem because of demand [to view their content] from Indians living abroad.

Online piracy:

The Internet has been an enabler for the movie and music industry. Many cinema and music publishers have their own channels, say, on YouTube. Although content cannot be directly downloaded from YouTube, "YouTube grabber" software enables piracy.

Surreptitious recording of public performances on mobile phones and recording of cinema screenings using camcorders are other instances of piracy. These recordings are later circulated on the Internet.

Software piracy:

Recently, one automobile manufacturer had to recall a set of its vehicles from the Indian market. Investigations revealed that one of the automobile components, which was procured from a supplier, was created using pirated software. There is a fair chance that a pirated product won't provide all the functionalities that you might otherwise get, or that some APIs (Application Programming Interface) may be missing, which may lead to erroneous or inaccurate design.

Counterfeiting, online piracy, end user piracy, client overuse, and hard disk loadings [sideloading] amount to most of the software piracy in India. One of the software companies for whom we [PWC] are doing an audit - it happens to be one of the leading information technology companies in India - we identified a gap of 20 million [US] dollars for one software publisher in their India operations. Whether this was deliberate or not can be debated, but it is a serious problem.

A survey on software piracy conducted across the globe by Business Software Alliance indicates that India has improved from bring ranked tenth to twelveth. Estimated use of unlicensed software stands at 43% globally; India is at 60% [as per the latest figures]. In 2010, India was at 64%, in 2011 at 63%. There is a recent case of a patent getting rejected because the organisation that had applied for it had used unlicensed software for designing the product. Another serious impact with regard to RnD and patents is on privacy. [Pirated software could contain] malware with the potential of stealing information].

Some of the major problems are that organisations are not aware of the implications of using pirated software and media, leading to potential non-compliances. [Owing to] lack of knowledge of licensing, the different software licenses, software publishers not using a standard format of licensing, the end consumer does not understand what licensing is. In the license terms, there is a "Right to Audit", which gives every software publisher the right to evaluate your organisation at any time.

Corporates are trying to align themselves with consultants like us [PWC] to support the industry in curbing piracy. The Make in India program has a dedicated section on intellectual property (IP). There is a special focus on intellectual property rights (IPR) for the manufacturing sector, which is directly affected by digitalisation. We hope that with the new government, some change will happen in the software piracy space.

Omesh Puri, Senior Associate, LexOrbis

Effective Copyright Enforcement in the Digital Era: Relevance of John Doe Orders

Copyright enforcement challenges in the digital world:

Rapid growth in digital technology presents enormous opportunities for copyright owners as it expands their customer base, reduces distribution costs, and makes territorial boundaries almost a nullity. The disadvantage is that, unless regulated properly, it exposes copyrighted work to threat of blatant infringement spread across different media including the Internet. The main problem before copyright owners is ever-growing online piracy. The Internet grants anonymity to copyright infringers. There can be a number of occasions where copyright owners are not able to ascertain the infringer's identity even after spending considerable time or money. In such cases, a John Doe order comes as an effective enforcement tool.

The name John Doe is used to identify unknown and nameless infringers or defendants who have allegedly committed some wrong, but whose identity is unknown to the plaintiff. To avoid delay and injustice, the court names the defendant John Doe, until such time as the defendant is identified. The orders passed by courts in such cases are known as John Doe orders, and is an internationally accepted practice to enforce IPR, especially with respect to copyright and trademark. This is prevalent in various jurisdictions including the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This order has also been formalised in the statutory provision of these countries. It is an ex-parte interim injunction with the added benefit that the plaintiff is given the liberty to add to the array of parties who would be identified after the filing of the suit. These orders are an exception to the general rule which requires the defendant to be identified prior to the filing of the suit. The ex-parte interim injunction then applies even against the later defendants. It is also against the defendants whose identities are unknown during the filing of the suit. The orders enjoin unknown defendants from engaging in any infringing activity.

Why are John Doe orders so popular?

These orders allow for immediate action in case any instance of infringement comes to light. As the copyright owners only need to serve a copy of the order to the erring parties instead of filing of a new suit. By filing a single action, and after obtaining a single John Doe order, the plaintiff would be able to cover all alleged and even potential infringements and violators, which would ultimately save a lot of time and costs. The plaintiff would not be required to file separate court actions before different courts in India. Once they obtain this order, it will block all unknown defendants and infringers. It is also able to reduce online piracy by mandating that internet service providers block access to infringing websites.

Some of the important John Does copyright injunctions passed in India:

The first John Doe order was passed in the famous case of Ten Sports entitled Taj Television v. Rajan Mandal. The plaintiff, Taj Television, a Dubai-based company, owned and operated an exclusive sports channel by the name Ten Sports. They had acquired the exclusive rights to broadcast the 2002 FIFA World Cup. They entered into agreements with various cable operators for transmission of the channel. However, many unlicensed cable operators started displaying Ten Sports without any permission or authorisation from Taj Television, which then instituted a suit against named and unnamed cable operators. In 2002, the Delhi High Court passed a pathbreaking order which stopped the unauthorised broadcast of FIFA World Cup matches.

The Indian Court has specifically held that such orders may be enforced against persons whose identities are unknown at the time of instituting the suit.

Whose identities fall within the scope of action?

So long as the litigating finger is directed at an unknown person, the inability to identify him by name is a mere misnomer. The principle of litigating finger was affirmed in this case. After this there have been a series of John Doe orders. However it is only in recent times that the Indian Judiciary has started granting these orders on a regular basis, especially for blocking websites. In another case in 2014, Star India Pvt. Ltd. vs. Haneeth Ujwal, the plaintiff was one of the leading broadcasters in India. They had acquired the exclusive broadcasting rights, which includes television, mobile, Internet or on-demand rights with respect to the 2014 India vs. England Test Series. Star India filed the suit against websites, many of which were unidentifiable in nature or the owners could not be located. They were showing these cricket matches live without the permission of Star India. The websites' viewers could either view the ad-supported free version or the video-on-demand or pay-per-view subscription-enabled version. The availability of this content is supported by advertisements found on these websites.

How could the exclusive rights of the plaintiff be protected, and what can be the appropriate remedy?

Should the websites be blocked completely or only the specific URL providing access to the infringing content? The court held that both known and unknown defendants were liable for infringement as there was no remedy available to the plaintiff other than blocking the entire website. Blocking URLs was considered to be insufficient remedy by the court because, in its opinion, the website owners could easily change the specified URL by merely one character to circumvent the John Doe order passed by the Court.

Challenges:

While it has become routine to seek John Doe copyright injunctions before every big movie release or any major sporting event, many claim that they have largely remained unsuccessful in checking and controlling small street pirates. Lack of police cooperation may also render these orders unenforceable. There is another dispute going on whether these orders should be limited to entire websites or specific URLs. The Delhi HC has previously granted orders to extend the inclusion of these orders on the entire website. However, there is another opinion by Madras HC which said that these orders would be limited to specific URLs. In the absence of specific judicial guidelines, there is no clarity on the scope of these orders or under what circumstances these may be granted. There is a risk of misuse and improper implementation of these orders.

James Martin, Director, Fieldfisher

Online Infringement In the European Union

(Recent Court Rulings in the European Union Regarding Online Copyright Infringement and Database Rights)

The Svensson case:

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that the owner of a website may use hyperlinks to redirect Internet users to protected works available on other websites without the authorisation of the copyright holder of the linked website, provided that the linked website is freely available, that is, it can be accessed by anyone on the Internet.

The Retriever Sverige website operated to provide clickable links to articles published by other websites on the internet. The claimants were journalists who wrote articles for the Goteborgs-Posten website, and those articles were being linked by the Retriever Sverige website. The claimants argued that the Retriever Sverige hyperlink constituted an infringement of the claimant's copyright by making a communication to the public without the author's permission and they alleged that this was contrary to Article 3 of the Information Society Services Directive, commonly known as the InfoSoc Directive, which is the European Directive that harmonises copyrights across the 28 member states of the EU within the Information Society. The case made its way to the Swedish Court of Appeal which stayed the proceedings pending references to four questions to the CJEU.

1. If anyone other than the holder of copyright in a certain work supplies a clickable link to the work on his website, does that constitute communication to the public within the meaning of Article 3(1) of the InfoSoc Directive?

2. Is the assessment under Q1 affected if the work which the link refers is on a website on the Internet, which can be accessed by anyone without restrictions or if access is restricted in some way?

3. When making the assessment under Q1, should any distinction be drawn between a case where the work, after the user has clicked on the link, is shown on another website and one where the work, after the user has clicked on the link, is shown in such a way as to give the impression that the content is appearing on the same website, in other words, framing the content.

4. Is is possible for a [an EU] Member State to give wider protection to the author's exclusive rights by enabling communication to the public to cover a greater range of acts than provided for in Art. 3(1) of the Info Soc Directive?

In answer to the first question, the Court of Justice determined that "communication to the public " requires both a "communication" and a "public". The hyperlinks were determined to be making available, and therefore, they were an act of communication. However, there is a sting in the tail, because the Court of Justice held that the public must be a new public, and the communication must be directed to a new public. A public that wasn't taken into account by the copyright holders when they first authorised their initial communication to the public. In the second stanza for Svensson, the public targeted by the journalists' original articles consisted of all potential visitors to the Goteborgs-Posten website, which was unrestricted. Therefore they could be freely used and read by any Internet user. Consequently the links provided by the Retriever Sverige website were not to a new public and there was no need to obtain the author's consent.

In response to the second question, the situation would be different if the link allowed users to bypass restrictions designed to limit access to the public such as a paywall as can be found on The Times London websites, the Wall Street Journal websites and many others. Such users were not taken into account by the original copyright holders when the initial communication was authorised. So those people would constitute a new public.

Regarding the third question, the framing, the Court of Justice unusually held that it was irrelevant. The Internet user who clicks on a hyperlink is given the impression that the link is appearing on the site that contains the link, in other words, framing somebody else's content that is already freely available on the internet on your own website is absolutely fine, and there are obviously issues that arise out of that concerning advertising revenue streams that some people have on their websites where they are effectively making money by putting content freely on the internet by having advertising revenue surrounding their content. But of course if somebody can freely embed that content on their website, those adverts aren't necessarily seen. But as far as the European Court of Justice is concerned in the context of copyright, this is perfectly acceptable, and this applies across all 28 EU Member States.

In answering the fourth question, the CJEU held that member states do not have the right to give wider protection to copyright holders by widening the concept of "communication to the public" from that which is given in the InfoSoc Directive, as this would otherwise give rise to legislative differences between member states contrary to the purposes of the directive.

Bestwater ruling:

The Bestwater case reconfirmed the liberal approach that the Court of Justice takes towards embedding copyright material on a third party website. The judgement has been stayed pending the outcome of the decision handed down in the Svensonn case. And the CJEU has ruled that unless an original publisher uses technical access restrictions, then embedded content does not reach a new public. The effect of this judgement, combined with the Svensonn judgement is likely to lead to more restrictive publishing practices within the EU. Copyright holders will seek to avoid free riders taking advantage of the loophole that the court seems to have legitimised. So to provide background,

The Bestwater case was referred to the Court of Justice by the German Federal Court of Justice. It deals with a promotional video about water pollution that was produced by Bestwater International, a company that makes water filters. The film was originally published by Bestwater on its own company website and later uploaded to YouTube, allegedly without the permission or knowledge of Bestwater. The defendants were competitors of Bestwater, and they embedded the video on their websites, with the frames pointing to the YouTube copy. Now Bestwater objected to this use and sought an injunction against the two representatives of the rival company from the German Court. Bestwater's position was that the video was protected by copyright and that the exclusive rights to use the film belonged to Bestwater. So the German court referred the case to the CJEU asking whether the embedding of content of a third-party website on one's own website constitutes a communication to the public within the meaning of Article 3(1) of the InfoSoc Directive.

After the Svensonn decision, the Court of Justice felt that it had already put an end to the debate regarding content on the Internet and it reverted to the German Court suggesting that the latter should withdraw its submission. In other words, saying that they did not want give an answer, saying that they had already answered it. The German Court insisted on a decision, one of the main reasons apparently being that in the Bestwater case, the YouTube video which the defendants were linking to and embedding on their website was itself a copyright violation. Nevertheless, in delivering its decision the CJEU followed the same rationale as in Svensonn and held that embedding content from another website does not amount to communication to the public if the uploader did not restrict access to the content and communicated it to the entire web community. There was no new public accessing the Bestwater video when it was embedded on the defendant's website, because when the video was uploaded on YouTube, whether lawfully or unlawfully, it was intended to be accessed by all who have access to the Internet. So this ruling somewhat cast doubt on the technical and economic understanding of modern media publication because the CJEU's position seems to be that the Internet is a medium rather than a mere technology. In other words, by analogy, a website does not compare to a particular magazine, newspaper, or a particular TV channel, but print media, TV in general, i.e, the relevant audience being all those who have access to magazines and newspapers rather than access to a particular newspaper, and all those who have access to TVs rather than a specific channel. So from a purely economic perspective these decisions raise concerns as they open up numerous possibilities to take advantage of copyright holders and content of other parties on the Internet. Based on these decisions, it's now possible to use written content, images or other videos that are hosted on another website for one's own website simply by embedding them. Apart from using somebody else's Internet bandwidth (which wasn't addressed by the CJEU at all), the CJEU in these copyright cases haven't taken account that the embedded content is actually taken out of its original context, and the advertisements displayed on the original website alongside the uploaded content may not appear on the embedded website, and the embedder may therefore spoil an important source of revenue for the copyright owner and use third-party copyright content for its own economic benefit. The most obvious response to these decisions will be that copyright owners will need to protect their content by implementing paywalls or other restrictive measures from the outset.

Another decision that the ECJ handed down involved the low-cost European Airline, RyanAir. This has been a long running dispute with various third parties, but one third party in particular, which accessed content on the RyanAir website to enable the sale of RyanAir flights and details about RyanAir time tables and schedules available on that third-party website, and interestingly, one thing that the Court of Justice raised in that decision is that it may be possible for owners of content to bind third parties in contract, but obviously you need to ensure that you are binding that third party in contract by accessing the website so that even if you cannot sue them for copyright infringement, you may be able to sue them for breach of contract for accessing your content and placing it on their website.

Database rights (AutoTrack v. GasPedaal)

The Court of Justice ruled in 2014 that the use of a meta-search engine can, in certain circumstances, constitute re-utilisation of the contents of the database in the meaning of Article 7(2)(b) of the Database Directive.

Database rights is an unusual concept, very newly come into the EU, and they provide protection above and beyond copyright protection. You don't necessarily need to have original content in a database, it's really protecting the investment an individual makes in actually producing the database, and that investment can be assessed on a qualitative or quantitative basis.

The Database Directive introduced the bespoke new form of legal protection. It is commonly referred to as the sui generis right . Article 7(1) in particular provides a "right for the maker of a database which shows that there has been qualitatively and/ or quantitatively a substantial investment in either obtaining, verification or presentation of the content to prevent extraction and/or re-utilisation of the whole or of a substantial part, evaluated quantitatively and/or qualitatively, of the contents of that database". Now for this purpose, Article 7(2)(b) provides that "re-utilisation means any form of making available to the public of all or a substantial part of the contents of a database by the distribution of copies, by renting, by online, or other forms of transmission". Article 7(5) provides that "the repeated and systematic extraction and/or re-utilisation of insubstantial parts of the contents of the database implying acts which conflict with a normal exploitation of that database or which unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the maker of the database shall not be permitted."

The recitals to the Directive also back this up. So recital 42 of the Directive provides for "The right to prevent extraction and/or re-utilization related to acts by the user which go beyond his legitimate rights and thereby harm the investment". "The right to prohibit extraction and or re-utilization of all or a substantial part of the contents of a database relates not only to the manufacture of a parasitical competing product but also to any user who, through his acts, causes significant qualitative or quantitative detriment to the investment".

Turning to the facts of this case, Wegener operated a website called AutoTrack which carried car sale advertisements updated daily of to a 190,000 to 200,000 second hand cars of which around 40,000 were to be found on the AutoTrack website. Now Innoweb operated an online car advertisement website called GasPedaal. Rather than having its own database, it used a dedicated meta-search engine which then searched third party websites including AutoTrack's, using those websites to obtain results. So when a user typed in search terms on the GasPedaal website, the site's search engine would translate the relevant command into a language that could be understood by the AutoTrack web search engine. The AutoTrack search engine would then find any relevant advertisements and make them available on the GasPedaal search engine, which would then sort and collate those results from other dedicated search engines on other websites as well. The GasPedaal search engine would then note where more than one site produced the same advertisement and then made a single search result of those, presenting the user with links to the multiple sources. For each search performed, the GasPedaal search engine only returned results representing a small number of the advertisements on the AutoTrack site, but that is because it was only returning results that matched the relevant search terms given by the Internet user. Now Wegener successfully sued Innoweb for infringement of its database right. Innoweb appealed and the Hague Court of Appeal stayed the proceedings pending reference to the CJEU for a ruling on nine questions. The Court of Justice did not consider it necessary to consider all the nine questions. It ruled that it would be an infringement to the database right to use the meta-search engine in circumstances such as that involved in such proceedings. Under Article 7(1), an operator who makes available on the internet a dedicated meta-search engine such as GasPedaal re-utilises the whole or substantial part of the contents of a protected database, when that database's meta-search engine:

1) provides the end user with a search form which essentially offers the same range of functionality as the search form on the original database site.

2) where it translates queries from end users into the search engine for the database site in real time so that all the information on that database is searched through.

3) where it presents the results to the end user using a format of the website grouping duplications together into a single block item in an order that reflects the criteria comparable to those used by the search engine of the database site concerned for presenting results.

A dedicated meta-search engine is different from a general search engine based on an algorithm (like Google), primarily because a meta-search engine does not have its own data itself. It makes use of search engines of third party websites by transferring the queries from its users to the other search engines having first translated them into the relevant format required. It therefore offers the public a service where it searches the entire contents of the third-party databases or part of them in real time.

So Article 7(2)(b) has been broadly drafted to include "any other form of making available". The EUCJ attributed a broad meaning to the concept of reutilisation in its case law focusing on the objective of the database right which is to stimulate investment in data storage and processing systems. So in light of this objective, the re-utilisation has been construed as referring to any unauthorised act of making available to the public the results of the database maker's investment. Accordingly, in this case, it included any distribution to the public of the contents of the database regardless of the nature and form of the process used. When a website operator makes a dedicated meta-search engine available on the Internet, it does more than just point out the third-party databases that exist that a user can go to and consult. It gives the end user the means of searching all that data in most third-party databases without even visiting those third party databases' websites and akin to the Svensson and Bestwater case, this might mean that advertisers might stop advertising on the original third-party's site and might start placing advertisements on the meta-search engine's site. Now in this case we are looking at database rights, the EUCJ considered this dedicated meta-search engine to be close to a parasitical competing product. But it made a reference to the fact that this wording exists in Recital 42 of the Preamble of the Database Directive. The legislation is different, so this is why it has reached a different result, but still, it leads to a conflicting approach. So the Court of Justice held that the meta-search engine sites are close to being parasitical competing products and they've gone on to explain the fact that they resemble databases even though they themselves do not contain databases. And therefore in this case, and in similar cases, operators of such search engines would be making available to contents of third party websites within the meaning of Article 7(2)(b).

What are the effects of this judgement?

By bypassing the homepage and most other pages of the site that actually contain the database, meta-search engines can divert hits, and potentially advertising revenues. Operators of websites that scrape data from third parties and enable those third party sites to be searched, and by doing so thereby risks diverting advertising revenue may therefore need to review their technical business model in light of this judgement.

Chaitanya Prasad, Controller General of Patents, Designs & Trade Marks, India

In India, patents, trademarks, designs, and geographical indications are administered by the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks. We have offices in New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Ahmedabad. We have a Geographical Indications Registry located in Chennai as well as an Institute of Intellectual Property Management in Nagpur.

There are other IPR laws administered by different ministries. The Ministry of Human Resource Development looks after the Copyright laws. The Department of Information Technology looks after the Semiconductors, Integrated Circuits, and Layouts and Designs Act.

The number of patents in force in India in 2013 was 41,103 out of which 82 per cent were owned by non-resident Indians. The average age of patents in force in India is around 11.6 years, incidentally the second- highest in the world. The reason could be that India is a large market and companies want to exploit these patents and keep them in force.

National IP Trends

The filing of patents in India has gone up from around 35,000 to around 43,000 from 2007 to 2014, and the resident filing has gone up from 17% to 25%. In the year 2011-12, 11,000 patent applications were examined while in 2013-14, the number was 18,000. On a comparative basis, in India one patent examiner examined 140 patent applications in 2014 against 50 and 70 in the US and EU respectively. Therefore, it is the lack of human resources that is creating a backlog in the processing of patents in India vis-a-vis other countries.

Initiatives of the Indian Patent Office aimed at creating easy access to patents offices, and at Improving Its Quality and Services:

Comprehensive e-filing has been introduced where every document and form can be filed online, with regard to patent and trademarks. A payment gateway was launched in 2014, wherein Internet banking facilities of more than 70 banks can be used in addition to debit cards and credit cards for filing any patent or trademark. There is complete electronic processing in the patent and trademark office. Every paper that comes in is scanned, digitised and uploaded. Every paper that is issued from or received by the office is made available on the website.

An entry in the national phase can be done by filing Form 1 and the last page of the specification as we are directly streaming specifications from the WIPO patents scope. Incentives are being given for online filing. There is a 10% cost differential between online and offline filing since February 2014. One month after the incentive was introduced, online filing went up from 30% to 75%.

A new category has been introduced for Medium and Small Enterprises (MSMEs) in patents and designs. MSMEs get 50% discount for filing.

Quality management teams have been hired and skill development of personnel has been undertaken. Measures to introduce more transparency have been sought and efforts have been made to disseminate information with regard to IPRs. Real-time status of IP applications is available within tier file wrappers and e-registers.

The Indian Patent Office does weekly publication of online journals. We have a free public search facility. We have started instant email communications to applicants in trademarks specifically for filing purposes. We have started QR-coded communications for smartphones.

We have introduced a number of dynamic utilities where one can avail of information in real-time. Using the "stock and flow utility" one can find the stock of applications as well as the flow of applications from one process to another. From this, one can drill down to the office, the field, and the application itself and go to the file in the file wrapper and see the entire office thrown open to the world. One of the utilities counts and publicly displays the number of lapsed and expired patents in real-time. Because the patents have either lapsed or expired, these can be searched through fields of technology through any patent application that was not renewed or has expired. These applications are available on the website with the specification and search facility on a real-time basis. A number of other dynamic utilities for examinations, show-cause hearings, publications, registrations, et cetera have been made available online in real-time. We have started working as an international searching authority and have started giving high quality reports. These are currently available to all Indians.

We are shortly going to provide a searchable patent database. We are also bringing in an integrated search engine and are augmenting our human resources. The new government has approved 1,033 new posts in the patent and trademark offices, and with the training and skill of the increased human resources, we will stand on par with the best in the world with regard to the examination and disposal of both patent and trademark applications. We are completely overhauling our hardware and processing software. We will soon introduce new guidelines - one on computer-related inventions and another on search and examination generally.

Dr. Stefan V. Steinbrener, Consultant, Bardehle Pagenberg

Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions at the EPO

"Computer-implemented invention" (CII) is defined in the guidelines of the European Patents Office as an expression intended to cover claims which involve computers, computer networks, or other programmable apparatus, whereby prima facie one or more of the features of the claimed invention are realised by means of a programme or programs. Such a claim directed at computer-implemented inventions may take the form of a method of implementing said apparatus, apparatus set up to execute the method, or following the computer programme itself or as well as the physical media carrying the programme, computer programme product claims such as data carrier, storage medium, computer readable medium, or signal.

One can assume that an important part of all applications will fall under this definition. In 2010, the EPO granted 60,000 patents out of which 20,000 were covered by the said definition.

The core regulation is Article 52 of the EPC: European patents shall be granted for inventions in all fields of technology provided that they involve an inventive step and are susceptible for industrial application. Further, there is a list of non-inventions which include discoveries, scientific theories, mathematical methods, schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games, doing business, programmes for computers, and presentations for information. This will include or exclude patentability only to the extent to which the European patent application or patent related to such subject matter or activity.

The nature and language of such a regulation mandate the identification of a criterion delimiting excluded items from non-excluded ones. On the one hand, we have no definition of statutory subject matter apart from stipulation that inventions arise from all fields of technology. On the other hand we have a definition of a non-exhaustive list of exceptions, which are not patentable or have non-patentable subject matter. This regulation is, however, contrasting with respect to US regulations. In paragraph 101 in the US, the definitions of statutory subject matter can be found and the non-patentable subject matter is determined through findings of the Supreme Court, abstract ideas, laws of nature and natural phenomena.

Thus from a legal aspect, there are two hurdles for patent eligibility. The first is the patent eligibility of the subject matter. If this is in the affirmative, then the next hurdle is whether the elements of a patent are satisfied, namely, novelty, innovativeness, and industrial applicability.

According to European standards, an invention may not be innovative but may be patent eligible so long as the subject matter is patentable. The judicial issues that are to be addressed are the development of a coherent method of identifying the patentability of a subject matter and subsequently dealing with the grey areas in technicality by sifting through individual cases in order to arrive at certain guidelines for approaching individual cases of patent eligibility.

The finding of the case law upon the first issue is that an invention is such if the claimed subject matter has some technical matter. A subject matter is said to have technical character if it relates to a technical device, product or relates to technical means. "Technical means" has been liberally construed such that in a particular matter a method of storing information using paper and a pencil is patent eligible subject matter because the method employs technical means such as paper and pencil. However, the same would not be patented as the implementation of the same is trivial. The answer to the same question of patentability would be no if it is among the excluded subject matter or is similar to another invention. The barrier to patent eligibility will not disappear but the threshold is much lower. It is only when a subject matter is completely devoid of technical means can it be not called can invention. Barriers also come into play when the idea is abstract or even if there is a possibility of the use of technical means to some extent but claims for the same are not made.

Are computer-implemented innovations patent eligible under the EPC?

The answer would be yes, if explicitly tied to technical means.

When determining whether the invention has the required qualities of a patent, the answer would be in the affirmative if those of the technical features that contribute to the technical character are noble, inventive and industrially applicable. Thus only features of a technical character are taken into consideration while the others making no such contribution are ignored. For example, there have been a lot of patent applications for business methods from the United States, after the State's Street Bank Decision. These applications may have about forty pages of description of the business innovation with a disclaimer note at the end stating that the implementation of the same can be achieved through basic hardware that are already in use. Such applications lack an inventive step and can therefore cannot be patented. Thus, the basic test of patent eligibility with regard to the definition of an invention is the determination of whether there is a technical solution to a technical problem.

Some of the excluded subject matter may contribute towards technical character. Mathematical methods, for example, in the case of cryptography, wherein a mathematical algorithm may assist in the implementation of the same; then such a mathematical method may be patentable.

Further, "technical" should be understood to mean technological. But generally, it is difficult to define the term "technical", even through case laws. The meaning of the same in the core area is however undisputed while the semantics which lack definition are only at the fringes which may be identified in individual cases. We thus work with a dynamic concept of technology.

Ravi Bhola, Partner, KnS Partners

Patent Valuation and its Interplay with FRAND Terms

There are two broad methodologies for the valuation of patents. One is quantitative valuation by taking into consideration the income, the cost, and the market. However, the more relevant method is the qualitative analysis wherein one can look into the scope of the claims, geographical coverage, et cetera. Patent valuation is sometimes speculative. However, in an observation made by a court in the Federal Circuit, a judge directed a re-trial stating that in the study by the patentee, which was an SEP holder, the damages were predicted on speculation and unrealistic assertions. Thus one can ponder about whether there is a requirement to take into consideration a greater number of tools, software, or parameters for the valuation of intellectual property.

In order to strike a balance with society, SEP holders are obligated to licence their patents on FRAND terms to interested parties. The observed trend is that because SEPs are more important, they are valued higher than regular patents. Therefore, the question arises: Are SEPs are over- valued? For this purpose, reference must be made to four ongoing cases concerning SEPs.

Ericsson v. Micromax:

While the adjudication had commenced, it was observed that Ericsson has prior license agreements on FRAND terms of its 8 SEPs (under litigation in this case) with players in the West and other parts of the world. The court thus called forth these agreements for perusal.

Therefore, the first contentious concern is the manner or methodology adopted by the courts to arrive at the unrealistic rates of royalties. However, it is evident in this case that the court, by referring to prior agreements with the same set of SEPs, are trying to bring down the rates of royalty to more realistic values, even at the interim stage.

A similar situation has been observed in the case between Ericsson and Xiaomi, which is pending in the Delhi High Court. Here the court arrived at the amount of Rs. 100 as an interim arrangement, till the adjudication of the matter has been completed. It was again speculated here as to whether the amount was inflated.

The trend observed in the patent litigation at the Delhi High Court where most of such matters are adjudicated, is that unlike the pharmaceuticals sphere, there is a greater tendency in the telecommunication patent litigation to grant a temporary injunction, modify or even vacate the same while determining royalties payable, even at this stage.

How has the West handled these matters with regard to SEP valuation?

Motorola sued Microsoft in the US over the infringement of some of its SEPs. The former sought 2.25% royalty, but the court set a lower rate, such that the royalty amount fell from 4 million USD to about 1.8 million USD. The question which arises is with regard to the manner of determination of such royalties and whether sufficient parameters are in existence [to determine royalties].

Another example is of a European case wherein Apple was found to be infringing SEPS owned by Motorola Mobility. Apple's claim before the European Commission was that as an interested and willing licensee, it had made efforts to obtain a license for the said patents under FRAND terms which Motorola Mobility deterred vehemently. The European Commission upon investigation found that Motorola was exploiting its dominant position in the market and it intentionally sought to oust Apple from the usage of technology protected by means of the SEPs. Damages were accordingly awarded in this case.

Therefore, there is uniformity in the notion that there is an obligation on SEP holders to license their patents to interested licensees on FRAND terms.

What constitutes reasonableness?

The presumption with subjective issues such as these is that the courts will define the same through case laws. While FRAND terms have been dealt with by the courts and even the European Commission, it is pertinent to note whether there have been any anti-trust or competition matters pertaining to the ongoing litigation in telecommunication patent infringement. The Competition law comes into picture while determining the checks and balances to ensure that the SEP holder acts in a reasonable manner.

In Micromax v. Ericsson and Intex v. Ericsson placed before the Competition Commission of India (CCI), Micromax and Ericsson claimed that they had approached Ericsson as licensees but the immense royalty rates put forth by Ericsson deterred them. The CCI after investigation affirmed the claims of Micromax and Intex, with the finding that Ericsson has indeed abused its dominant position. However, the Delhi High Court has directed the CCI to abstain from passing the final order as long as the case is sub-judice.

Daniel R. Bereskin , Q.C. Founding Partner, Bereskin & Parr LLP

Patents as Catalysts to Economic Growth

The more I studied WIPO data and other sources, the more I came to the conclusion that patent numbers, whether in terms of filing or grants are a pretty poor indicator of the level of innovation in a country. Many commentators have taken the view that the patent system throughout the world is in crisis and there are many reasons for this. Far too many patents are granted for very trivial innovative steps, if they are even innovative at all. They are tiny sideways steps, even backwards steps.

When I started in 1965, in order to get a patent, you had to have an invention that was new, "unobvious" and useful. Now we see many thousands of patents granted annually for inventions that are of very dubious merit. Not only does this not encourage economic growth, it tends to retard economic growth. Think of small and medium-sized enterprises, for example. When they are confronted with many thousands of patents that are far too expensive for them to properly evaluate, covering very trivial or insignificant steps.

It is really up to the government to a large extent to encourage innovation and they do that in many countries in different ways such as through research and development tax incentives. The trouble is that if a government spends money in encouraging research and development, it tends to be invisible to the ordinary member of the public whereas building roads and doing other things that are much more concrete in nature are easier and better from the short-term political view. At the same time, if a country is to grow economically, and to prosper in the future, it is absolutely crucial that governments make an investment. I think a rough rule of thumb is for governments to devote up to about 2% of their GDP to encouraging R&D, and that money is significant, but it has to be spent wisely.

Now India has come up for criticism by the US Chamber of Commerce for not adequately protecting IP rights. The International Trade Commission is conducting a survey right now of US firms to understand how the policies of India discriminate against US exports and investment. Canada is also on the watch-list, although it is the US's greatest trading partner and is in close proximity to the US. I find these comments to be very ironic because the US has a history of discriminating against foreigners when it comes to protecting its own citizens. In fact Prof. Jane Ginsburg who is a prominent teacher and writer called the US in the 19th century a pirate nation, and the reason why she said that is because the US refused to grant copyright to works of foreign authors and that did not change till 1891. The reason for that was that Americans liked to read British authors in preference to the works of American authors. So the solution was to not give copyrights to British authors. When they finally, grudgingly, granted copyright protection, it was on the condition that the books of foreign authors had to be manufactured in the United States. This manufacturing clause was not repealed until fairly recently and that was done only because by then the US realized that the US had become a big exporter of books by authors. So we have to take with a grain of salt the comments we get about IP policies in every country. It is very important to take a realistic view of what is really going on.

China has grown steadily in the past eight years to the point where the growth is now over nine trillion dollars. The growth in filing patents in China is incredible. It is going up exponentially and shows no signs of abating. In 2012, WIPO showed that Chinese nationals were responsible for almost 150,000 granted Chinese patents and the number of issued patents to foreigners was roughly 75,000. The problem with China is that there is no way of knowing what the mix is between patents of invention and utility models. Given the enormous disparity between the number of applications filed by the Chinese people in China compared with those filed by them abroad, most of the inventions that are utility models, or patents that are of very dubious economic value. My feeling is that these huge numbers are due to government policy in dictating to Chinese companies that they have to file a lot of patent applications, because it is easy for a government to say, "Look at how impressive our filing statistics are". You have to dig deeper to try to find out what the value is of the innovations that are represented by these patents. My feeling is that since such a small number, roughly 4% of all applications filed by the Chinese in China were filed abroad, that is an indication that the vast majority of these huge Chinese filings are not of any great economic importance.

India's GDP is over 1.3 trillion dollars. Economists predict that in 15 years, the Indian economy is expected to rival that of the US. Of course, India has a population of over 1.3 billion. The US has, maybe, a quarter of that. So you cannot exactly compare them.

Patent applications in Indiai show a somewhat disturbing trend. Although there is some growth in the patent filings by resident applicants, non-residents' filings swamp [outnumber] those of the residents. The number of applications filed abroad by companies and individuals of Indian origin is less than 10,000, which is a very small number given the size of the Indian economy.

There has been a very sharp decline in the past four years in the number of patents that are actually granted to individuals or companies where the inventors are of Indian origin. In 2014, less than 600 patents were granted to Indian nationals [WIPO statistics]. The number of patents granted to foreign applications is likewise declining and it is surprising. It could mean that the Indian Patent Office is getting tougher on "unobviousness". Nevertheless, the numbers are still pretty low.

Korea is a real success story. Their GDP is not yet at the level of India or China, but it is at 1.3 trillion dollars, which is not insignificant. But take a look at their patent application filings. Korean inventors were responsible for almost 150,000 filings in 2012. Koreans filed more than 50,000 applications abroad in the same year. These grants are substantial compared with [erstwhile] figures for India and China.

The US GDP is close to 17 trillion dollars and the economy seems to be continuing to grow. Right now the US economy is about 27% of the worldwide GDP. It is reasonable to conclude that the US has a very strong and vested interest in trying to ensure that IP rights are protected outside of the US because their continued growth depends on the protection of their homegrown IP.

Questions-Answers

How do you compare and contrast recent litigation in pharma versus litigation in the high-tech space, especially Ericsson and Vringo?

Pravin Anand (Managing Partner, Anand & Anand): In the Francis Xavier case in New Delhi, a division bench of the Delhi High Court said that an ex-parte injunction must not be granted in patent cases. The law, however, changed subsequently. The first evidence is of a DCJI clearance required when an application was moved by a pharma company and the news reached the patent owner by means of a right-to-information (RTI) request and private investigation. The patent owner then approached the court in order to prevent to the marketing of the product. Thus, before the launch of the product, the patent holder obtained a status quo. The rules of the division bench did not apply because balance of convenience was observed in maintaining the status quo. But that order essentially acted as an ex-parte injunction in a patent matter. This was phase one. Phase two saw the grant of injunction as the number of status quo order had exceeded twenty five in litigation against well known companies such as Pfeizer and Bristol Meyers. These orders were converted to injunctions by the judges.

The third phase was brought on by the Ericsson, Vringo, and other electronics companies, which albeit through lesser litigations, were able to create quite a stir. Ex-parte injunctions were granted in these cases. However, the judges felt the need to arrive at interim arrangements in lieu of the injunctions. Earlier, pending trial, these arrangements involved the payment of money and royalty by the defendants through their sales, directly to the plaintiff.

Therefore, the present stance is that both status quo orders and temporary injunctions are in use in pharma litigation before the launch of the product. Subsequently, the grant of such orders is rare. The impediment after launch is that the price difference between the plaintiff's and the defendant's product are evident to the question. Prior to the launch, only the plaintiff's product exists in the market. Hence, the grant of such orders is said to be in favour of balance of convenience. The mobile phone patent litigation cases, however, are witnessing the grant of interim orders, rather, arrangements.

Why is it that the Courts cannot wait another day to hear both the parties before granting the ad interim injunction?

Abhay Pandey, Partner, LexOrbis: The main issue that is going to come up in electronic product litigation is the pleading which contains the product mapping. In the Ericsson cases, there is an indirect reference made to the infringements, i.e., the devices are following the standards and not the readings to the claims. Therefore, the issue of injunctions will arrive only once the product is broken down into the claims.

D.P. Vaidya (Lakshmikumaran Sreedharan)

Computer Related Inventions and Indian Patent Law

Section 2 of the Indian Patent Act defines “invention” as any new process or new product which has or which involves an inventive step and is capable of industrial applications. “Inventive step” as well as “capable of industrial application” are defined in the Act. Section 3 defines what are not inventions. With respect to computer related inventions (CRIs), section 3(k) is worded differently than the provision for CRIs in the European Patent Convention (EPC). In Indian law, mathematical methods, algorithms, and business methods are not considered “inventions”, irrespective of whether they are “as such”. Computer programs are qualified with the phrase “per se” instead. The only common thing between EPC and Indian patent law is that “computer programs per se” or “computer programs as such” are not inventions. So programs that do not quality “per se” or “as such” could be patentable.

What are CRIs?

CRIs can be classified as: CRIs related to general purpose computers and CRIs implemented by specific computers (and not special purpose computers). General purpose computers are inventions that work towards different types of solutions. The solutions could be purely mathematical calculations or technical problems.

The term “business method” is not precisely defined in law as much as the abstract idea is. Generally speaking, any commercial transaction will qualify as a “business method” going by my observations from various decisions in the US, UK, and Europe.

Example technical problem: What is the point of presence (PoP) for designing network topology or network architecture?

Based on rules and various parameters defined for the topology or architecture, a schematic is drawn up. It shows the locations where the PoPs should be placed to minimise the cost of operations and the investment. This is also an application that can be implemented over a general purpose computer.

Would it fall under the definition of an “algorithm”? The definition of “algorithm” in the guidelines is very broad. Whether or not it is implemented on a [general purpose] computer, it will be treated as a “computer” because there is no qualifier as “per se” or “as such”. If it is an algorithm, it is not patentable.

Then, what is not an “algorithm”? It could be argued that all methods will fall under the definition of “algorithm”. The IEEE definition of a “solution to a problem” is that it is a finite set of well-defined rules in a finite number of steps. For example, a complete specification for a sequence of arithmetic operations for evaluating the value of sin “x” for a given precision. When the aim is mainly to determine a certain value or function for optimisation or for arithmetic calculations, the method or process can be treated as an “algorithm”. From a legal point of view, methods are patentable, but paradoxically, algorithms are not considered inventions.

Then next level of general-purpose computer-implemented inventions (CII) are those that make changes in the operating systems [instead of sitting on top of the operating system]. By making changes in the operating system, the CII is changing the character of the computer. It is improving the computer, and therefore it is patentable. Also, a general purpose computer operating a machine or a technical process is patentable.

Embedded Computer-Implemented Inventions:

Wherever there is embedded software, the patent controllers generally do not have any issues related to patentability. They may have issues related to inventive step.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/report-global-intellectual-property-convention-2015

Report: Digitally Open: Innovation and Open Access Forum, 23 Oct 2010, Doha, Qatar

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T07:43:25Z

A summary of the event "Digitally Open: Innovation and Open Access Forum" held in Doha.

Although I arrived in early morning of Saturday, 23 October 2010, I managed to attend Digitally Open: Innovation and Open Access Forum, held at Sharq Village, Doha Qatar. Here is below a summary of the event.

The welcoming speech was given by Dr. Hessa Al Jaber, secretary General of the Supreme Council of Information and Communication Technology, ictQATAR. Al Jaber spoke about the importance of open digital environments for the region, and outlined specific initiatives that ictQATAR is leading to embrace it (establishment of incubation center, drafting policies that encourage open source in government and arabizing content). She noted that "The Arab world has a strong and important voice that must be heard. Embracing a digitally open world will put us at the forefront of innovation and help propel us towards being a knowledge based economy." The full speech of Dr. Al Jaber is available here.

Michelle Baker, Chairperson of Mozilla Foundation provided her insights of openness. She described elegantly openness as “a state of mind” and is about spreading innovation. To Baker, if you want to be effective on the internet, you need to have “scale”. Openness is important for “scale”. Creative Commons is a framework of how to work with a copyright system and share ideas. Mozilla intends to build a layer of the internet designed for individuals to make civil and social value. According to Baker, there are many degrees of “openness” and it up to the users contributing to open projects and the companies to choose between the various levels. She argues that openness does not mean “free” and believe that in certain areas this might hold some truth, but the matter is far from being settled.

Joi Ito, CEO, Creative Commons gave an interesting presentation entitled “Innovation and Digital Content Rights”. He described from his own experience while working for Japanese IT companies how innovation was perceived pre the internet era and afterward. He also compared between the traditional style of IT innovation (governments, large companies, experts) and the new style of innovation with the arrival of the internet (users contributing to open source and open content projects). To joi, the internet is made of various layers and stacks. Creative Commons is the next stack. It basically lowers the costs and creates an explosion in knowledge and innovation. He gave examples of organizations that are using Creative Commons including Wikipedia, Aljazeera, and Governments in New Zealand and Australia.

Chris Dibona, Open Source Programs Manager, Google, spoke about open source. He outlined the motivations behind releasing code by developers. He described how Google practices open source projects such as “Chromium”. One audience member asked Dibona about Google’s attention in the region in relation to open source. He replied that Google needs to learn more about the region and the culture of the Middle East. His full presentation is available here.

Professor Michael Nelson, a visiting professor of Internet Studies, Georgetown University spoke about “open clouds”. He emphasised that we are living in new world where small countries can make big impact in technology world. Estonia is the most “wired” country in Europe. Skype changed the way we do business. Qatar can provide the seed for the magic cloud. This can be achieved by having the right policies in the right time.

The second panel entitled “Openness in Science and Technology” was moderated by John Wilbanks, Vice President for Science, Creative Commons. He gave introductory remarks to the use of CC in science. His full presentation is available here.

Shaikah Al- Jaber, Director of Marketing, Innovation and Alliance, Qtel International gave a presentation entitled “Open Innovation for Telecom Companies in the Middle East”. She mainly spoke about innovation in the telecommunication sector and how it can be achieved. Her full presentation is available here.

Hesham Al Komy, Head of Sales and Marketing, Middle East and Africa, Redhat, gave a presentation entitled “From Linux to Beyond”. He went through the history and development of “open source”. Redhat was the first cooperation to take “open source” into the commercial arena. It was founded in 1983 and it currently employs 3500 employees with offices in 29 countries. He also discussed other issues related to open source community and open source adoption. His full presentation is available here.

Habib Hadid, the founder of Yalla Startup and Yamili.com did not give a presentation, but instead spoke spontaneously about business and how innovation and openness can help it. He recommended at the end to consider “innovation as a human right”.

Lucio Rispo, a strategic research director for the Qatar Science and Technology Park, spoke about the internet technological revolution and how it is changing the world. He described several initiatives that were taken in Doha, Qatar including IQRA to spread technology and innovation. His full presentation is available here.

The third panel was about “Openness in Government” that was moderated by Professor Michael Nelson. Sunil Abraham, executive Director for the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India provided interesting remarks about the internet and openness from the perspective of developing countries especially India. He also mentioned the importance of putting government funded research under open transparent and open models.

Paul Keller, Senior Project Lead of Technology and the Public Domain, Knowledgeland, Netherlands, discussed the ways to promote openness in the public sector through the use of Creative Commons licensing model. To view his presentation click here. Marwan Marouf Mahmod, Executive Director of ICT Industry Development, ictQATAR spoke about his experience and the initiatives that they have taken in ictQatar.

The final panel was entitled “Culture, Creativity and Openness”. There were 3 speakers in this panel. Eric Steuer, Creative Commons Director and the moderator of the session gave an introduction to CC. He described how CC is being used in Education, music, museums, design, films and journalism. His full presentation is available here.

Addulrahman Al Qataba is a web and application developer from Qatar. He presented his philosophy on “open life”. He developed several projects that serve the open source community in mobile applications. The full presentation is available here.

Arend Kuster, Managing Director of Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation (BQF) outlined the initiative that Bloomsbury Publishing is taking in Qatar to spread knowledge through printed books and journals published in Arabic and English.

Roger Mandle, spoke about museums and his experience as a director of the Qatar Museum Authority.

CC Arab World Second Meeting
Sunday, 24 October 2010
Sharq Village
12:30 p.m – 9:00 p.m.

The CC Arab world was attended by lawyers from Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and also users and enthusiasts supporting CC from across the region. The meeting was divided into two sessions. The first was for all attendees and the second was divided into two groups one for users and another for lawyers.

The first session started with a welcoming note by Joi Ito, who stressed the importance of reaching consensus decisions on important matters related to CC in the Arab world. He noted the difficulties associated with organising such an event and the efforts that CC has invested to bring all people together. Donna thanked the organizers and the supporters of the event particularly ictQATAR. She also set out the agenda for the meeting. Diane spoke about the Affiliate Enhancement Program and Michelle gave details on drafting road maps for each jurisdictions. Speakers from Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and the UAE presented their road maps to CC.

After discussion and questioning, Diane gave an introduction to CC naming policy in other jurisdictions including Spanish speaking countries. The discussion of CC naming policy started with Rami Olwan writing in Arabic suggested terms for English CC licences. There were two views in relation to the translation of the English terms to Arabic. The first view came from lawyers who want to use legal words that might not sound appealing to Arabic users of the licences. The second view came from users who want to use words that might not be legal and enforceable in courts. After discussion that lasted three hours, a decision was reached on each term. It was agreed to either to use المشاع الإبداعي (creative Commons) or use the English version alone. Attribution: نسب المصنَف; ShareAlike: الترخيص بالمثل, NoDerivatives: منع الاشتقاق; NonCommercial: غير تجاري.

I attended the second meeting of the session for lawyers. Diane and Joi were present at this session. Diane spoke then allowed each of the jurisdiction leads to speak. Hala Essalmawi from CC Egypt spoke about the A2K project in the library of Alexandria, Egypt and how it was important to start the project there.

I spoke also about the importance for CC in governments and education. Pierre El Khoury and Mohammed AL Darwish spoke about their upcoming events that will feature Lawrence Lessig as a speaker to the Lebanese Bar Association. Mohammad from CC Lebanon also spoke about his involvement in the Consumers International and the reports that he produced for A2K in Lebanon.

Omar Al Taweel presented his views to CC of how CC should proceed in Jordan. Several questions were asked by the lawyers and Diane gave answers. The meeting ended as some of the attendees had to leave for the airport.

See the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/report-digitally-open-innovation-and-open-access-forum-23-oct-2010-doha-qatar

Report on Understanding Aadhaar and its New Challenges

Japreet Grewal, Vanya Rakesh, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, and Elonnai Hickock — 2019-03-16T04:42:52Z

The Trans-disciplinary Research Cluster on Sustainability Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University collaborated with the Centre for Internet and Society, and other individuals and organisations to organise a two day workshop on “Understanding Aadhaar and its New Challenges” at the Centre for Studies in Science Policy, JNU on May 26 and 27, 2016. The objective of the workshop was to bring together experts from various fields, who have been rigorously following the developments in the Unique Identification (UID) Project and align their perspectives and develop a shared understanding of the status of the UID Project and its impact. Through this exercise, it was also sought to develop a plan of action to address the welfare exclusion issues that have arisen due to implementation of the UID Project.

Report: Download (PDF)

This Report is a compilation of the observations made by participants at the workshop relating to myriad issues under the UID Project and various strategies that could be pursued to address these issues. In this Report we have classified the observations and discussions into following themes:

1. Brief Background of the UID Project

2. Legal Status of the UIDAI Project

Procedural issues with passage of the Act
Status of related litigation

3. National Identity Projects in Other Jurisdictions

Pakistan
United Kingdom
Estonia
France
Argentina

4. Technologies of Identification and Authentication

Use of Biometric Information for Identification and Authentication
Architectures of Identification
Security Infrastructure of CIDR

5. Aadhaar for Welfare?

Social Welfare: Modes of Access and Exclusion
Financial Inclusion and Direct Benefits Transfer

6. Surveillance and UIDAI

7. Strategies for Future Action

Annexure A Workshop Agenda

Annexure B Workshop Participants

1. Brief Background of the UID Project

In the year 2009, the UIDAI was established and the UID project was conceived by the Planning Commission under the UPA government to provide unique identification for each resident in India and to be used for delivery of welfare government services in an efficient and transparent manner, along with using it as a tool to monitor government schemes. The objective of the scheme has been to issue a unique identification number by the Unique Identification Authority of India, which can be authenticated and verified online. It was conceptualized and implemented as a platform to facilitate identification and avoid fake identity issues and delivery of government benefits based on the demographic and biometric data available with the Authority.

The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 (the “Act”) was passed as a money bill on March 16, 2016 and was notified in the gazette March 25, 2016 upon receiving the assent of the President. However, the enforceability date has not been mentioned due to which the bill has not come into force.

The Act provides that the Aadhaar number can be used to validate a person’s identity, but it cannot be used as a proof of citizenship. Also, the government can make it mandatory for a person to authenticate her/his identity using Aadhaar number before receiving any government subsidy, benefit, or service. At the time of enrolment, the enrolling agency is required to provide notice to the individual regarding how the information will be used, the type of entities the information will be shared with and their right to access their information. Consent of an individual would be obtained for using his/her identity information during enrolment as well as authentication, and would be informed of the nature of information that may be shared. The Act clearly lays that the identity information of a resident shall not be sued for any purpose other than specified at the time of authentication and disclosure of information can be made only pursuant to an order of a court not inferior to that of a District Judge and/or disclosure made in the interest of national security.

2. Legal Status of the UIDAI Project

In this section, we have summarised the discussions on the procedural issues with the passage of the Act. The participants had criticised the passage of the Act as a money bill in the Parliament. The participants also assessed the litigation pending in the Supreme Court of India that would be affected by this law. These discussions took place in the session titled, ‘Current Status of Aadhaar’ and have been summarised below.

Procedural Issues with Passage of the Act

The participants contested the introduction of the Act in the form of a money bill. The rationale behind this was explained at the session and is briefly explained here. Article 110 (1) of the Constitution of India defines a money bill as one containing provisions only regarding the matters enumerated or any matters incidental to the following: a) imposition, regulation and abolition of any tax, b) borrowing or other financial obligations of the Government of India, c) custody, withdrawal from or payment into the Consolidated Fund of India (CFI) or Contingent Fund of India, d) appropriation of money out of CFI, e) expenditure charged on the CFI or f) receipt or custody or audit of money into CFI or public account of India. The Act makes references to benefits, subsidies and services which are funded by the Consolidated Fund of India (CFI), however the main objectives of the Act is to create a right to obtain a unique identification number and provide for a statutory mechanism to regulate this process. The Act only establishes an identification mechanism which facilitates distribution of benefits and subsidies funded by the CFI and this identification mechanism (Aadhaar number) does not give it the character of a money bill. Further, money bills can be introduced only in the Lok Sabha, and the Rajya Sabha cannot make amendments to such bills passed by the Lok Sabha. The Rajya Sabha can suggest amendments, but it is the Lok Sabha’s choice to accept or reject them. This leaves the Rajya Sabha with no effective role to play in the passage of the bill.

The participants also briefly examined the writ petition that has been filed by former Union minister Jairam Ramesh challenging the constitutionality and legality of the treatment of this Act as a money bill which has raised the question of judiciary’s power to review the decisions of the speaker. Article 122 of the Constitution of India provides that this power of judicial review can be exercised to look into procedural irregularities. The question remains whether the Supreme Court will rule that it can determine the constitutionality of the decision made by the speaker relating to the manner in which the Act was introduced in the Lok Sabha. A few participants mentioned that similar circumstances had arisen in the case of Mohd. Saeed Siddiqui v. State of U.P. [1].

where the Supreme Court refused to interfere with the decision of the Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly speaker certifying an amendment bill to increase the tenure of the Lokayukta as a money bill, despite the fact that the bill amended the Uttar Pradesh Lokayukta and Up-Lokayuktas Act, 1975, which was passed as an ordinary bill by both houses. The Court in this case held that the decision of the speaker was final and that the proceedings of the legislature being important legislative privilege could not be inquired into by courts. The Court added, “the question whether a bill is a money bill or not can be raised only in the state legislative assembly by a member thereof when the bill is pending in the state legislature and before it becomes an Act.”

However, it is necessary to carve a distinction between Rajya Sabha and State Legislature. Unlike the State Legislature, constitution of Rajya Sabha is not optional therefore significance of the two bodies in the parliamentary process cannot be considered the same. Participants also made another significant observation about a similar bill on the UID project (National Identification Authority of India (NIDAI) Bill) that was introduced before by the UPA government in 2010 and was deemed unacceptable by the standing committee on finance, headed by Yashwant Sinha. This bill was subsequently withdrawn.

Status of Related Litigation

A panellist in this session briefly summarised all the litigation that was related to or would be affected by the Act. The panellist also highlighted several Supreme Court orders in the case of KS Puttuswamy v. Union of India [2] which limited the use of Aadhaar. We have reproduced the presentation below.

KS Puttuswamy v. Union of India - This petition was filed in 2012 with primary concern about providing Aadhaar numbers to illegal immigrants in India. It was contended that this could not be done without a law establishing the UIDAI and amendment to the Citizenship laws. The petitioner raised concerns about privacy and fallibility of biometrics.
Sudhir Vombatkere & Bezwada Wilson [3] - This petition was filed in 2013 on grounds of infringement of right to privacy guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution of India and the security threat on account of data convergence.
Aruna Roy & Nikhil Dey [4] - This petition was filed in 2013 on the grounds of large scale exclusion of people from access to basic welfare services caused by UID. After their petition, no. of intervention applications were filed. These were the following:
Col. Mathew Thomas [5] - This petition was filed on the grounds of threat to national security posed by the UID project particularly in relation to arrangements for data sharing with foreign companies (with links to foreign intelligence agencies).
Nagrik Chetna Manch [6] - This petition was filed in 2013 and led by Dr. Anupam Saraph on the grounds that the UID project was detrimental to financial service regulation and financial inclusion.
S. Raju [7] - This petition was filed on the grounds that the UID project had implications on the federal structure of the State and was detrimental to financial inclusion.
Beghar Foundation - This petition was filed in 2013 in the Delhi High Court on the grounds invasion of privacy and exclusion specifically in relation to the homeless. It subsequently joined the petition filed by Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey as an intervener.
Vickram Crishna – This petition was originally filed in the Bombay High Court in 2013 on the grounds of surveillance and invasion of privacy. It was later transferred to the Supreme Court.
Somasekhar – This petition was filed on the grounds of procedural unreasonableness of the UID project and also exclusion & privacy. The petitioner later intervened in the petition filed by Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey in 2013.
Rajeev Chandrashekhar– This petition was filed on the ground of lack of legal sanction for the UID project. He later intervened in the petition filed by Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey in 2013. His position has changed now.
Further, a petition was filed by Mr. Jairam Ramesh initially challenging the passage of the Act as a money bill but subsequently, it has been amended to include issues of violation of right to privacy and exclusion of the poor and has advocated for five amendments that were suggested to the Aadhaar Bill by the Rajya Sabha.

Relevant Orders of the Supreme Court

There are six orders of the Supreme Court which are noteworthy.

Order of Sept. 23, 2013 - The Supreme court directed that: 1) no person shall suffer for not having an aadhaar number despite the fact that a circular by an authority makes it mandatory; 2) it should be checked if a person applying for aadhaar number voluntarily is entitled to it under the law; and 3) precaution should be taken that it is not be issued to illegal immigrants.
Order of 26th November, 2013 – Applications were filed by UIDAI, Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, Govt of India, Indian Oil Corporation, BPCL and HPCL for modifying the September 23rd order and sought permission from the Supreme Court to make aadhaar number mandatory. The Supreme Court held that the order of September 23rd would continue to be effective.
Order of 24th March, 2014 – This order was passed by the Supreme Court in a special leave petition filed in the case of UIDAI v CBI [8] wherein UIDAI was asked to UIDAI to share biometric information of all residents of a particular place in Goa to facilitate a criminal investigation involving charges of rape and sexual assault. The Supreme Court restrained UIDAI from transferring any biometric information of an individual without to any other agency without his consent in writing. The Supreme Court also directed all the authorities to modify their forms/circulars/likes so as to not make aadhaar number mandatory.
Order of 16th March, 2015 - The SC took notice of widespread violations of the order passed on September 23rd, 2013 and directed the Centre and the states to adhere to these orders to not make aadhaar compulsory.
Orders of August 11, 2015 – In the first order, the Central Government was directed to publicise the fact that aadhaar was voluntary. The Supreme Court further held that provision of benefits due to a citizen of India would not be made conditional upon obtaining an aadhaar number and restricted the use of aadhaar to the PDS Scheme and in particular for the purpose of distribution of foodgrains, etc. and cooking fuel, such as kerosene and the LPG Distribution Scheme. The Supreme Court also held that information of an individual that was collected in order to issue an aadhaar number would not be used for any purpose except when directed by the Court for criminal investigations. Separately, the status of fundamental right to privacy was contested and accordingly the Supreme Court directed that the issue be taken up before the Chief Justice of India.
Orders of October 16, 2015 – The Union of India, the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan, and authorities including SEBI, TRAI, CBDT, IRDA , RBI applied for a hearing before the Constitution Bench for modification of the order passed by the Supreme Court on August 11 and allow use of aadhaar number schemes like The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme MGNREGS), National Social Assistance Programme (Old Age Pensions, Widow Pensions, Disability Pensions) Prime Minister's Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) and Employees' Providend Fund Organisation (EPFO). The Bench allowed the use of aadhaar number for these schemes but stressed upon the need to keep aadhaar scheme voluntary until the matter was finally decided.

Status of these orders
The participants discussed the possible impact of the law on the operation of these orders. A participant pointed out that matters in the Supreme Court had not become infructuous because fundamental issues that were being heard in the Supreme Court had not been resolved by the passage of the Act. Several participants believed that the aforementioned orders were effective because the law had not come into force. Therefore, aadhaar number could only be used for purposes specified by the Supreme Court and it could not be made mandatory. Participants also highlighted that when the Act was implemented, it would not nullify the orders of the Supreme Court unless Union of India asked the Supreme Court for it specifically and the Supreme Court sanctioned that.

3. National Identity Projects in Other Jurisdictions

A panellist had provided a brief overview of similar programs on identification that have been launched in other jurisdictions including Pakistan, United Kingdom, France, Estonia and Argentina in the recent past in the session titled ‘Aadhaar - International Dimensions’. This presentation mainly sought to assess the incentives that drove the governments in these jurisdictions to formulate these projects, mandatory nature of their adoption and their popularity. The Report has reproduced the presentation here.

Pakistan

The Second Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan in 2000 established the National Database and Regulation Authority in the country, which regulates government databases and statistically manages the sensitive registration database of the citizens of Pakistan. It is also responsible for issuing national identity cards to the citizens of Pakistan. Although the card is not legally compulsory for a Pakistani citizen, it is mandatory for:

Voting
Obtaining a passport
Purchasing vehicles and land
Obtaining a driver licence
Purchasing a plane or train ticket
Obtaining a mobile phone SIM card
Obtaining electricity, gas, and water
Securing admission to college and other post-graduate institutes
Conducting major financial transactions

Therefore, it is pretty much necessary for basic civic life in the country. In 2012, NADRA introduced the Smart National Identity Card, an electronic identity card, which implements 36 security features. The following information can be found on the card and subsequently the central database: Legal Name, Gender (male, female, or transgender), Father's name (Husband's name for married females), Identification Mark, Date of Birth, National Identity Card Number, Family Tree ID Number, Current Address, Permanent Address, Date of Issue, Date of Expiry, Signature, Photo, and Fingerprint (Thumbprint). NADRA also records the applicant's religion, but this is not noted on the card itself. (This system has not been removed yet and is still operational in Pakistan.)

United Kingdom

The Identity Cards Act was introduced in the wake of the terrorist attacks on 11th September, 2001, amidst rising concerns about identity theft and the misuse of public services. The card was to be used to obtain social security services, but the ability to properly identify a person to their true identity was central to the proposal, with wider implications for prevention of crime and terrorism. The cards were linked to a central database (the National Identity Register), which would store information about all of the holders of the cards. The concerns raised by human rights lawyers, activists, security professionals and IT experts, as well as politicians were not to do with the cards as much as with the NIR. The Act specified 50 categories of information that the NIR could hold, including up to 10 fingerprints, digitised facial scan and iris scan, current and past UK and overseas places of residence of all residents of the UK throughout their lives. The central database was purported to be a prime target for cyber attacks, and was also said to be a violation of the right to privacy of UK citizens. The Act was passed by the Labour Government in 2006, and repealed by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government as part of their measures to “reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour Government and roll back state intrusion.”

Estonia

The Estonian i-card is a smart card issued to Estonian citizens by the Police and Border Guard Board. All Estonian citizens and permanent residents are legally obliged to possess this card from the age of 15. The card stores data such as the user's full name, gender, national identification number, and cryptographic keys and public key certificates. The cryptographic signature in the card is legally equivalent to a manual signature, since 15 December 2000. The following are a few examples of what the card is used for:

As a national ID card for legal travel within the EU for Estonian citizens
As the national health insurance card
As proof of identification when logging into bank accounts from a home computer
For digital signatures
For i-voting
For accessing government databases to check one’s medical records, file taxes, etc.
For picking up e-Prescriptions
(This system is also operational in the country and has not been removed)

France

The biometric ID card was to include a compulsory chip containing personal information, such as fingerprints, a photograph, home address, height, and eye colour. A second, optional chip was to be implemented for online authentication and electronic signatures, to be used for e-government services and e-commerce. The law was passed with the purpose of combating “identity fraud”. It was referred to the Constitutional Council by more than 200 members of the French Parliament, who challenged the compatibility of the bill with the citizens’ fundamental rights, including the right to privacy and the presumption of innocence. The Council struck down the law, citing the issue of proportionality. “Regarding the nature of the recorded data, the range of the treatment, the technical characteristics and conditions of the consultation, the provisions of article 5 touch the right to privacy in a way that cannot be considered as proportional to the meant purpose”.

Argentina

Documento Nacional de Identidad or DNI (which means National Identity Document) is the main identity document for Argentine citizens, as well as temporary or permanent resident aliens. It is issued at a person's birth, and updated at 8 and 14 years of age simultaneously in one format: a card (DNI tarjeta); it's valid if identification is required, and is required for voting. The front side of the card states the name, sex, nationality, specimen issue, date of birth, date of issue, date of expiry, and transaction number along with the DNI number and portrait and signature of the card's bearer. The back side of the card shows the address of the card's bearer along with their right thumb fingerprint. The front side of the DNI also shows a barcode while the back shows machine-readable information. The DNI is a valid travel document for entering Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. (System still operational in the country)

4. Technologies of Identification and Authentication

The panel in the session titled ‘Aadhaar: Science, Technology, and Security’ explained the technical aspects of use of biometrics and privacy concerns, technology architecture for identification and inadequacy of infrastructure for information security. In this section, we have summarised the presentation and the ensuing discussions on these issues.

Use of Biometric Information for Identification and Authentication

The panelists explained with examples that identification and authentication were different things. Identity provides an answer to the question “who are you?” while authentication is a challenge-response process that provides a proof of the claim of identity. Common examples of identity are User ID (Login ID), cryptographic public keys and ATM or Smart cards while common authenticators are passwords (including OTPs), PINs and cryptographic private keys. Identity is public information but an authenticator must be private and known only to the user. Authentication must necessarily be a conscious process and active participation by the user is a must. It should also always be possible to revoke an authenticator. After providing this understanding of the two processes the panellist then explained if biometric information could be used for identification or authentication under the UID Project. Biometric information is clearly public information and it is questionable if it can be revoked. Therefore it should never be used for authentication, but only for identity verification. There is a possibility of authentication by fingerprints under the UID Project, without conscious participation of the user. One could trace the fingerprints of an individual from any place the individual has been in contact with. Therefore, authentication must certainly be done by other means. The panellist pointed out that there were five kinds of authentication under the UID Project, out of which two-factor authentication and one time password were considered suitable but use of biometric information and demographic information was extremely threatening and must be withdrawn.

Architectures of Identification

The panelists explained the architecture of the UID Project that has been designed for identification purposes, highlighted its limitations and suggested alternatives. His explanations are reproduced below.

Under the UID Project, there is a centralised means of identification i.e. the aadhaar number and biometric information stored in one place, Central Identification Data Repository (CIDR). It is better to have multiple means of identification than one (as contemplated under the UID Project) for preservation of our civil liberties. The question is what the available alternatives are. Web of trust is a way for operationalizing distributed identification but the challenge is how one brings people from all social levels to participate in it. There is a need for registrars who will sign keys and public databases for this purpose.

The aadhaar number functions as a common index and facilitates correlation of data across Government databases. While this is tremendously attractive it raises several privacy concerns as more and more information relating to an individual is available to others and is likely to be abused.

The aadhaar number is available in human readable form. This raises the risk of identification without consent and unauthorised profiling. It cannot be revoked. Potential for damage in case of identity theft increases manifold.

Under the UID Project, for the purpose of information security, Authentication User Agencies (“AUA”) are required to use local identifiers instead of aadhaar numbers but they are also required to map these local identifiers to the aadhaar numbers. Aadhaar numbers are not cryptographically secured; in fact they are publicly available. Hence this exercise for securing information is useless. An alternative would be to issue different identifiers for different domains and cryptographically embed a “master identifier” (in this case, equivalent of aadhaar number) into each local identifier.

All field devices (for example POS machines) should be registered and must communicate directly with UIDAI. In fact, UIDAI must verify the authenticity (tamper proof) of the field device during run time and a UIDAI approved authenticity certificate must be issued for field devices. This certificate must be made available to users on demand. Further, the security and privacy frameworks within which AUAs work must be appropriately defined by legal and technical means.

Security Infrastructure of CIDR

The panelists also enumerated the security features of the UID Project and highlighted the flaws in these features. These have been summarised below.

The security and privacy infrastructure of UIDAI has the following main features:

2048 bit PKI encryption of biometric data in transit
End-to-end encryption from enrolment/POS to CIDR
HMAC based tamper detection of PID blocks
Registration and authentication of AUAs
Within CIDR only a SHA 1 Hash of Aadhaar number is stored
Audit trails are stored SHA 1 encrypted. Tamper detection?
Only hashes of passwords and PINs are stored. (biometric data stored in original form though!)
Authentication requests have unique session keys and HMAC
Resident data stored using 100 way sharding (vertical partitioning). First two digits of Aadhaar number as shard keys
All enrolment and update requests link to partitioned databases using Ref IDs (coded indices)
All accesses through a hardware security module
All analytics carried out on anonymised data

The panellists pointed out the concerns about information security on account of design flaws, lack of procedural safeguards, openness of the system and too much trust imposed on multiple players. All symmetric and private keys and hashes are stored somewhere within UIDAI. This indicates that trust is implicitly assumed which is a glaring design flaw. There is no well-defined approval procedure for data inspection, whether it is for the purpose of investigation or for data analytics. There is a likelihood of system hacks, insider leaks, and tampering of authentication records and audit trails. The ensuing discussions highlighted that the UIDAI had admitted to these security risks. The enrolment agencies and the enrolment devices cannot be trusted. AUAs cannot be trusted with biometric and demographic data; neither can they be trusted with sensitive user data of private nature. There is a need for an independent third party auditor for distributed key management, auditing and approving UIDAI programs, including those for data inspection and analytics, whitebox cryptographic compilation of critical parts of the UIDAI programs, issue of cryptographic keys to UIDAI programs for functional encryption, challenge-response for run-time authentication and certification of UIDAI programs. The panellist recommended that there was a need to to put a suitable legal framework to execute this.

The participants also discussed that information infrastructure must not be made of proprietary software (possibility for backdoors for US) and there must be a third party audit with a non-negotiable clause for public audit.

5. Aadhaar for Welfare?

The Report has summarised the discussions that took place in the sessions on ‘Direct Benefits Transfers’ and ‘Aadhaar: Broad Issues - II’ where the panellists critically analysed the claims of benefits and inclusion of Aadhaar made by the government in light of the ground realities in states where Aadhaar has been adopted for social welfare schemes.

Social Welfare: Modes of Access and Exclusion

Under the Act, a person may be required to authenticate or give proof of the aadhaar number in order to receive subsidy from the government (Section 7). A person is required to punch their fingerprints on POS machines in order to receive their entitlement under the social welfare schemes such as LPG and PDS. It was pointed out in the discussions that various states including Rajasthan and Delhi had witnessed fingerprint errors while doling out benefits at ration shops under the PDS scheme. People have failed to receive their entitled benefits because of these fingerprint errors thus resulting in exclusion of beneficiaries [9]. A panellist pointed out that in Rajasthan, dysfunctional biometrics had led to further corruption in ration shops. Ration shop owners often lied to the beneficiaries about functioning of the biometric machines (POS Machines) and kept the ration for sale in the market therefore making a lot of money at the expense of uninformed beneficiaries and depriving them of their entitlements.

Another participant organisation also pointed out similar circumstances in the ration shops in Patparganj and New Delhi constituencies. Here, the dealers had maintained the records of beneficiaries who had been categorized as follows: beneficiaries whose biometrics did not match, beneficiaries whose biometrics matched and entitlements were provided, beneficiaries who never visited the ration shop. It had been observed that there were no entries in the category of beneficiaries whose biometrics did not match however, the beneficiaries had a different story to tell. They complained that their biometrics did not match despite trying several times and there was no mechanism for a manual override. Consequently, they had not been able to receive any entitlements for months. The discussions also pointed out that the food authorities had placed complete reliance on authenticity of the POS machines and claim that this system would weed out families who were not entitled to the benefits. The MIS was also running technical glitches as a result there was a problem with registering information about these transactions hence, no records had been created with the State authority about these problems. A participant also discussed the plight of 30,000 widows in Delhi, who were entitled to pension and used to collect their entitlement from post offices, faced exclusion due to transition problems under the Jan Dhan Yojana (after the Jandhan was launched the money was transferred to their bank accounts in order to resolve the problem of misappropriation of money at the hands of post office officials). These widows were asked to open bank accounts to receive their entitlements and those who did not open these accounts and did not inform the post office were considered bogus.

In the discussions, the participants also noted that this unreliability of fingerprints as a means of authentication of an individual’s identity was highlighted at the meeting of Empowered Group of Ministers in 2011 by J Dsouza, a biometrics scientist. He used his wife’s fingerprints to demonstrate that fingerprints may change overtime and in such an event, one would not be able to use the POS machine anymore as the machine would continue to identify the impressions collected initially.

The participants who had been working in the field had contributed to the discussions by busting the myth that the UID Project helped to identify who was poor and resolve the problem of exclusion due to leakages in the social welfare programs. These discussions have been summarised below.

It is important to understand that the UID Project is merely an identification and authentication system. It only helps in verifying if an individual is entitled to benefits under a social security scheme. It does not ensure plugging of leakages and reducing corruption in social security schemes as has been claimed by the Government. The reduction in leakage of PDS, for instance, should be attributed to digitization and not UID. The Government claims, that it has saved INR 15000 crore in provision of LPG on identification of 3.34 crore inactive accounts on account of the UID Project. This is untrue because the accounts were weeded by using mechanisms completely unrelated to the UID Project. Consequently, the savings on account of UID are only of INR 120 crore and not 15000 crore.
The UID Project has resulted in exclusion of people either because they do not have an aadhaar number, or they have a wrong identification, or there are errors of classification or wilful misclassification. About 99.7% people who were given aadhaar numbers already had an identification document. In fact, during enrolment a person is required to produce one of 14 identification documents listed under the law in order to get an aadhaar number which makes it very difficult for a person with no identity to become entitled to a social welfare scheme.

A participant condemned the Government’s claim that the UID Project had helped in removing fake, bogus and duplicate cards and said that these terms could not be used synonymously and the authorities had no clarity about the difference between the meanings of these terms. The UID Project had only helped in removal of duplicate cards but had not helped in combating the use of fake and bogus cards.

Financial Inclusion and Direct Benefits Transfer

The participants also engaged in the discussions about the impact of the UID project on financial inclusion in India in the sessions titled ‘Aadhaar: Broad Issues - I & II’. We have summarised these discussions below.

The UID Project seeks to directly transfer money to a bank account in order to combat corruption. The discussions highlighted that this was nothing but introducing a neo liberal thrust in social policy and that it was not feasible for various reasons. First, 95% of rural India did not have functioning banks and banks are quite far away. Second, in order to combat this dearth of banks the idea of business correspondents, who handled banking transactions and helped in opening of bank accounts, had been introduced which had created various problems. The Reserve Bank of India reported that there was dearth of business correspondents as there was very little incentive to become one; their salary is merely INR 4000. Third, there were concerns about how an aadhaar number was considered a valid document for Know Your Customer (KYC) checks. There was a requirement for scrutiny and auditing of documents submitted during the time of enrolment which, in the present scheme of things, could not be verified. Fourth, there were no restrictions on number of bank accounts that could be opened with a single aadhaar number which gave rise to a possibility of opening multiple and shell accounts on a single aadhaar number. Therefore, records only showed transactions when money was transferred from an aadhaar number to another aadhaar number as opposed to an account-to-account transfer. The discussion relied on NPCI data which shows which bank an aadhaar number is associated with but does not show if a transaction by an aadhaar number is overwritten by another bank account belonging to the same aadhaar number.

6. Surveillance and UIDAI

The participants had discussed the possibility of an alternative purpose for enrolling Aadhaar in the session titled ‘Privacy, Surveillance, and Ethical Dimensions of Aadhaar’. The discussion traced the history of this project to gain insight on this issue. We have summarised below the key take aways from this discussion.

There are claims that the main objective of launching the UID Project is not to facilitate implementation of social security schemes but to collect personal (financial and non-financial) information of the citizens and residents of the country to build a data monopoly. For this purpose, PDS was chosen as a suitable social security scheme as it has the largest coverage. Several participants suggested that numerous reports authored by FICCI, KPMG and ASSOCHAM contained proposals for establishing a national identity authority which threw some light on the commercial intentions behind information collection under the UID Project.

It was also pointed out that there was documented proof that information collected under the UID Project might have been shared with foreign companies. There are suggestions about links established between proponents of the UID Project and companies backed by CIA or the French Government which run security projects and deal in data sharing in several jurisdictions.

7. Strategies for Future Action

The participants laid down a list of measures that must be taken to take the discussions forward. We have enumerated these recommendations below.

Prepare and compile an anthology of articles as an output of this workshop.
Prepare position papers on specific issues related to the UID Project
Prepare pamphlets/brochures on issues with the UID Project for public consumption
Prepare counter-advertisements for Aadhaar
Publish existing empirical evidence on the flaws in Aadhaar.
Set up an online portal dedicated to providing updates on the UID Project and allows discussions on specific issues related to Aadhaar.
Use Social Media to reach out to the public. Regularly track and comment on social media pages of relevant departments of the government.
Create groups dedicated to research and advocacy of specific aspects of the UID Project.
Create a Coordination Committee preferably based in Delhi which would be responsible for regularly holding meetings and for preparing a coordinated plan of action. Employ permanent to staff to run the Committee.
Organise an advocacy campaign against use of Aadhaar in collaboration with other organisations and build public domain acceptance.
The campaign must specifically focus on the unfettered scope of UID and expanse, misrepresentation of the success of Aadhaar by highlighting real savings, technological flaws, status of pilot programs and increasing corruption on account of the UID Project
Prepare a statement of public concern regarding the UID Project and collect signatures from eminent persons including academics, technical experts, civil society groups and members of parliament.
Organise events and discussions on issues relating to Aadhaar and invite members og government departments to speak and discuss the issues.
Write to Members of Parliament and Members of Legislative Assemblies raising questions on their or their parties’ support for Aadhaar and silence on the problems created by the UID Project.
Organise public hearings in states like Rajasthan to observe and document ground realities of the UID Project and share these outcomes with the state government and media.
Plan a national social audit and public hearing on the working of UID Project in the country.
File Contempt Petitions in the Supreme Court and High Courts against mandatory use of Aadhaar number for services not allowed by the Supreme Court.
Reach out to and engage with various foreign citizens and organisations that have been fighting on similar issues. The organisations and individuals who could be approached would include EPIC, Electronic Frontier foundation, David Moss, UK, Roger Clarke, Australia, Prof. Ian Angel, Snowden, Assange and Chomsky.
Work towards increasing awareness about the UID Project and gaining support from the student and research community, student organisations, trade unions, and other associations and networks in the unorganised sector.

Annexure A – Workshop Agenda

May 26, 2016

9:00-9:30	Registration
9:30-10:00	Prof. Dinesh Abrol - Welcome Self-introduction and expectations of participants Dr. Usha Ramanathan - Overview of the Workshop
10:00-11:00	Session 1: Current Status of Aadhaar Dr. Usha Ramanathan, Legal Researcher, New Delhi - What the 2016 Law Says, and How it Came into Being S. Prasanna, Advocate, New Delhi - Status and Force of Supreme Court Orders on Aadhaar Discussion
11:00-11:30	Tea Break
11:30-13:30	Session 2: Direct Benefits Transfers Prof. Reetika Khera, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi - Welfare Needs Aadhaar like a Fish Needs a Bicycle Prof. R. Ramakumar, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai - Aadhaar and the Social Sector: A critical analysis of the claims of benefits and inclusion Ashok Rao, Delhi Science Forum - Cash Transfers Study Discussion
13:30-14:30	Lunch
14:30-16:00	Session 3: Aadhaar: Science, Technology, and Security Prof. Subashis Banerjee, Dept of Computer Science & Engineering, IIT, Delhi - Privacy and Security Issues Related to the Aadhaar Act Pukhraj Singh, Former National Cyber Security Manager, Aadhaar, New Delhi - Aadhaar: Security and Surveillance Dimensions Discussion
16:00-16:30	Tea Break
16:30-17:30	Session 4: Aadhaar - International Dimensions Joshita Pai, Center for Communication Governance, National Law University, Delhi - Biometrics and Mandatory IDs in Other Parts of the World Dr. Gopal Krishna, Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties - International Dimensions of Aadhaar Discussion
17:30-18:00	High Tea

May 27, 2016

9:30-11:00	Session 5: Privacy, Surveillance and Ethical Dimensions of Aadhaar Prabir Purkayastha, Free Software Movement of India, New Delhi - Surveillance Capitalism and the Commodification of Personal Data Arjun Jayakumar, SFLC - Surveillance Projects Amalgamated Col Mathew Thomas, Bengaluru - The Deceit of Aadhaar Discussion
11:00-11:30	Tea Break
11:30-13:00	Session 6: Aadhaar - Broad Issues I Prof. G Nagarjuna, Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai - How to prevent linked data in the context of Aadhaar Dr. Anupam Saraph, Pune - Aadhaar and Moneylaundering Discussion
13:00-14:00	Lunch
14:00-15:30	Session 7: Aadhaar - Broad Issues II Prof. MS Sriram, Visiting Faculty, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore - Financial lnclusion Nikhil Dey, MKSS, Rajasthan - Field witness: Technology on the Ground Prof. Himanshu, Centre for Economic Studies & Planning, JNU - UID Process and Financial Inclusion Discussion
15:30-16:00	Session 8: Conclusion
16:00-18:00	Informal Meetings

Annexure B – Workshop Participants

Anjali Bhardwaj, Satark Nagrik Sangathan

Dr. Anupam Saraph

Arjun Jayakumar, Software Freedom Law Centre

Ashok Rao, Delhi Science Forum

Prof. Chinmayi Arun, National Law University, Delhi

Prof. Dinesh Abrol, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Prof. G Nagarjuna, Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai

Dr. Gopal Krishna, Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties

Prof. Himanshu, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Japreet Grewal, the Centre for Internet and Society

Joshita Pai, National Law University, Delhi

Malini Chakravarty, Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability

Col. Mathew Thomas

Prof. MS Sriram, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore

Nikhil Dey, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan

Prabir Purkayastha, Knowledge Commons and Free Software Movement of India

Pukhraj Singh, Bhujang

Rajiv Mishra, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Prof. R Ramakumar, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

Dr. Reetika Khera, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi

Dr. Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali

S. Prasanna, Advocate

Sanjay Kumar, Science Journalist

Sharath, Software Freedom Law Centre

Shivangi Narayan, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Prof. Subhashis Banerjee, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi

Sumandro Chattapadhyay, the Centre for Internet and Society

Dr. Usha Ramanathan, Legal Researcher

Note: This list is only indicative, and not exhaustive.

[1] Civil Appeal No. 4853 of 2014

[2] WP(C) 494/2012

[3] . WP(C) 829/2013

[4] WP(C) 833/2013

[5] WP (C) 37/2015; (Earlier intervened in the Aruna Roy petition in 2013)

[6] WP (C) 932/2015

[7] Transferred from Madras HC 2013.

[8] SLP (Crl) 2524/2014 filed against the order of the Goa Bench of the Bombay HC in CRLWP 10/2014 wherein the High Court had directed UIDAI to share biometric information held by them of all residents of a particular place in Goa to help with a criminal investigation in a case involving charges of rape and sexual assault.

[9] See :http://scroll.in/article/806243/rajasthan-presses-on-with-aadhaar-after-fingerprint-readers-fail-well-buy-iris-scanners

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/report-on-understanding-aadhaar-and-its-new-challenges

Report on Understanding Aadhaar and its New Challenges

sumandro — 2016-09-28T12:44:38Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/report-on-understanding-aadhaar-and-its-new-challenges

Report on the WIPO Director General’s Meeting with NGO’s

puneeth — 2014-04-30T05:33:27Z

The Director General’s meeting with NGO’s was held on March 25, 2014. This is an annual meeting where accredited NGO’s have an opportunity to have a one on one discussion with the Director General on issues that concern them.

The webcast of the meeting can be found here.

This year’s meeting featured queries on a whole range of issues from mainstreaming the development agenda recommendations to the number of WIPO meetings. The Director General engaged in a frank exchange of views with NGO representatives and stressed the importance of NGO’s in WIPO’s work.

Opening Statement

The meeting kicked off with a statement by the Director General. He reported that the demand for IP titles was greater than the world economy- citing the growing number of patent and trademark applications. He also commended the SCCR in concluding the Marrakesh Treaty and said that the engagement and alignment of civil society actors was crucial to the signing of the Treaty. He also noted the role of the World Blind Union and the publishing community in supporting the Treaty.

The Director General also had updates on the work of various committees for the 2014-15 biennium. With respect to the Design Law Treaty in the SCT, he stated that the US and Canada had accepted the possibility of an article on technical assistance but not as a condition to convene a diplomatic conference. On the Broadcast Treaty in the SCCR, he said that a lot of work needs to be done and that the SCCR needs to decide if a Treaty with a narrower scope is feasible and if a Diplomatic Conference has to be convened in September. On the IGC, he stated that this committee was WIPO’s greatest political risk and that the Committee must find a way to deliver on a project that has been on since 2001.On the Lisbon Agreement, the Director General stated that 28 States had agreed to renew the agreement and the new agreement would cover GI and Appellations. He noted that this was a huge step forward as GI’s become more and more valuable.

In addition, he noted three areas of interest for the future work of the WIPO:

Balance between collaboration and competition: The Director General noted that there should be greater emphasis on collaboration and competition at the WIPO. He called for emphasis on cooperation, open innovation in global value chains. At the same time he stated that IP also creates competition. He stated that the tension between competition and collaboration should be under consideration in the future as it is growing into a major geopolitical issue.
Digital Economy: The Director General said that Member States should engage on the impact of an increasingly digital world on the environment. While this issue has been under discussion since the 90’s, there have been new developments that need further consideration.
Appropriate Technology: The Director General commented on the passive transfer of technology and said that there is a knowledge gap between having technology and knowing how to use it, and this should be kept in mind in future wok.

Q&A

Following the opening statement, the Director General fielded questions from NGO representative. Below is a summary of a few notable responses from the Director General.

On a question regarding the mainstreaming of the Development Agenda, the Director General said that it is up to the Members to decide how to make the Development Agenda normative. But he pointed out that both the Beijing and Marrakesh Treaties refer to the Development agenda in their text.

In response to a question on future plans and projects on public health and IP, he said that the WIPO is encouraging research projects on the issue. He also pointed out that the WTO, WIPO and WHO are engaged in an active collaboration on this issue and had also organised a seminar on it. He also said that the three Director Generals had published studies on the topic.

MSF made a number of interventions on the issue of public health. They argued that ongoing WIPO research did not meet the needs for medical innovation and that there was need for serious rethink on how to make it work better. They also said that the focus of WIPO research was currently only on LDC’s and this left out developing countries and consequently a large number of people.

In response the Director General said that the WIPO could only “build with what it’s got” and said that they should engage with more parties and with what they do. He also said that they are beginning to engage with middle income countries. He also said that WIPO research was free and that it could be easily shared and the fee was only if there was a sale.

MSF also called for a change on the nature of technical assistance as there were repeated seminars on anti-counterfeiting measures with little or no focus on the quality of medicines. On this, the Director General agreed with MSF and said that the larger problem was quality assurance which needed to be addressed, but he also pointed out that WIPO as an IP agency could not get into the issue of quality assurance.

He also fielded a question from the author on making WIPO sessions more accessible with the possible use of remote participation in the future. The Director General said that this was a good idea, but he pointed out that this was up to the Members to consider and possibly implement. He also noted that it was only recently that WIPO started webcasting meetings and that there would be issues of time management with remote participation.

On a question about the increasing number of meetings at the WIPO, the Director General acknowledged that this was a problem and that the respective Committees had to decide if it was essential to convene a meeting ever so often. But he also pointed out that the Secretariat cannot interfere in such matters and could only facilitate discussion on these issues. He also said that it might be better if experts met regularly to discuss technical issues and negotiators met only when an issue had matured.

On a further question on the number of documents being released for every meeting and their increasing length, the Director General joked that it was unlikely that anyone under the age of 30 would read all the documents. He said that this is an issue that should be looked into.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/report-on-wipo-director-general-meeting-with-ngos

Centre for Internet and Society

Response by Knowledge Commons

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Resources

PUPFIP

News-related/General Coverage

Scientific Culture

Analytical Pieces

Bayh-Dole

Technology Transfer

Scientific Culture

Evaluative Pieces

General Resources

IP Alternatives

Resisting Revolutions

Resisting Internet Censorship: Strategies for Furthering Freedom of Expression in India

Participants include:

Immediate Background:

More Detailed Background:

The Organisers

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Research papers will be available in public domain

Research Advisory Network Meeting

Hosting of the Event

Meeting Participant List

Research Advisory Network Committees

Special Guests

OECD Staff

Commission Secretariat

Research Advisory Network Biographies

Report: Global Intellectual Property Convention 2015

Digital piracy in India

Report: Digitally Open: Innovation and Open Access Forum, 23 Oct 2010, Doha, Qatar

Report on Understanding Aadhaar and its New Challenges

Report: Download (PDF)

1. Brief Background of the UID Project

2. Legal Status of the UIDAI Project

Procedural Issues with Passage of the Act

Status of Related Litigation

Relevant Orders of the Supreme Court

3. National Identity Projects in Other Jurisdictions

Pakistan

United Kingdom

Estonia

France

Argentina

4. Technologies of Identification and Authentication

Use of Biometric Information for Identification and Authentication

Architectures of Identification

Security Infrastructure of CIDR

5. Aadhaar for Welfare?

Social Welfare: Modes of Access and Exclusion

Financial Inclusion and Direct Benefits Transfer

6. Surveillance and UIDAI

7. Strategies for Future Action

Annexure A – Workshop Agenda

May 26, 2016

May 27, 2016

Annexure B – Workshop Participants

Report on Understanding Aadhaar and its New Challenges

Report on the WIPO Director General’s Meeting with NGO’s

Opening Statement

Q&A