I am representing IP Justice, an international advocacy organization on internet regulation and digital governance. I urge the delegates to reject the WIPO Broadcast Treaty and adopt Limitations and Exceptions provisions. Imagine when big broadcasting companies own the learning materials in school, and that broadcaster will own the contents created by artists. The Broadcast Treaty [...]
IP Justice and 11 other nonprofit organizations urged the US White House to apply a TRIPS-waiver relating to Covid-19 to all intellectual property rights, and not only patents. Many tools related to making vaccines and other critical medical equipment needed to fight Covid are hindered by restrictive intellectual property laws, including copyright, stated the organizations [...]
June 25, 2021 Ambassador Katherine Tai United States Trade Representative 600 17th Street NW Washington, DC 20508 Re: Supporting LDCs’ Request for Transition Period Dear Ambassador Tai: We urge the United States to support the request of Least Developed Countries (“LDCs”) to the TRIPS Council of the World Trade Organization (IP/C/W/668) for a transition period [...]
"There has been wide coverage of ICANN’s decision this week to adopt a new process for creating new global Top Level Domains (gTLDs).... Civil libertarians supporting Susan Crawford’s line argue that if governments are able to pressure ICANN into prohibiting .jihad (which has perfectly non-violent meanings in Islam as well as the terrorist connotations it has recently acquired in the West), then can a prohibition on .falun-gong be far behind? ..."
Before I make observations specific to these recommendations, I would like to offer some general remarks about the overall incongruence between trademarks and domain names. It is important to note at the outset this general lack of equivalence between trademark law and domain name policy. For instance, trademark law the world over is fundamentally based on the concept of territoriality. Thus trademark law seeks to protect regionally and market-based marks without implication for the protection or availability of that mark in another region. In contrast, domain names have global reach, are accessible everywhere and have implications for speech around the world. ...