Biden Administration Supports IP Waiver To Help Fight COVID. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced this week the Biden Administration’s support for waiving IP protections for COVID-19 vaccines. Citing the goal of getting “as many safe and effective vaccines to as many people as fast as possible,” Tai’s announcement stated: “This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances…

Today, the Biden administration announced it will support a proposal at the World Trade Organization to waive patent protections for coronavirus vaccines, potentially enabling the production of generic options. Public Knowledge commends the administration for balancing its intellectual property policy with the health care needs of people seeking the vaccine. The following can be attributed to Meredith Rose, Senior Policy Counsel at…

Re:Create Members Press Copyright Office On Constitutional Concerns With CASE Act. This week, Re:Create joined with Public Knowledge, the Center for Democracy & Technology, R Street Institute and the Organization for Transformative Works to submit feedback to the Copyright Office urging it to acknowledge and address the unconstitutional aspects of the CASE Act and its “Copyright Claims Board” (CCB). The…

Twenty years ago, we saw the creation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It was intended to modernize copyright law for the digital age. Instead, it made it much worse. Ordinary activities in the physical world — like loaning a copy of something, giving it away, or reselling it — are prohibited in the digital world. As media becomes increasingly…

TLDR: Across the country, small- and medium-sized companies rely on and benefit from balanced and certain intellectual property (IP) laws to innovate and build better businesses. That’s why this week’s celebration of World Intellectual Property Day provides a timely opportunity for U.S. policymakers to better appreciate the importance of such balance and certainty when crafting policy that applies to the emerging…

As part of the Copyright Office’s efforts to implement the CASE Act, it has asked for feedback on how to operate the “Copyright Claims Board” (CCB) and how it should try to prevent abuse of the system. The Center for Democracy and Technology joins Public Knowledge, Re:Create, the R Street Institute, and the Organization for Transformative Works in comments urging the…

SCOTUS Opinion Highlights The Importance Of Fair Use To Benefit The Public. Re:Create compiled key portions of the U.S Supreme Court’s majority opinion in the Google v. Oracle decision to demonstrate fair use’s importance in benefiting the public. Justice Breyer emphasized copyright law’s purpose to encourage innovation and promote creativity — not to create a “special reward.” Viral Video Helps…

Justice Stephen Breyer’s majority opinion highlights the importance of Fair Use to benefit the public, which is the key purpose of copyright law. See below for key findings from the opinion, illustrated by quotes from Breyer’s opinion. The purpose of copyright law is to encourage more innovation, not create a “special reward.” Breyer: “Copyright statutes and case law have made…

Supreme Court Underscores How Fair Use Promotes Creativity. Contrary to what some rightsholders claim, fair use actually promotes creativity, as Jonathan Band explains in his latest Project Disco blog on the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Google v Oracle fair use case. Band points to Justice Breyer’s comments that fair use is an “‘equitable rule of reason’ that ‘permits courts…

In policy discussions, rightsholders often claim that the fair use right, 17 U.S.C. § 107, undermines the incentive to create new works. The U.S. Supreme Court’s April 5, 2021 decision in Google v. Oracle, however, underscores how fair use actually promotes creativity.  The Court restates the principle that fair use is an “‘equitable rule of reason’ that ‘permits courts to avoid rigid application of the copyright…