Today, President Biden issued an “Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy.” Among other provisions, the order aims to address anticompetitive terms imposed by manufacturers that restrict third-party repair or self-repair of consumer goods that are powered by software. The order encourages the chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to consider undertaking a rulemaking on “unfair anticompetitive…

Public Knowledge believes it’s vitally important to protect Americans’ access to trustworthy sources of news. Some of our team can quote from memory the numbers related to news deserts and laid-off reporters in this country. And we are advocating on multiple fronts for policies to sustainably fund newsgathering, mitigate the impact of disinformation on digital platforms, and protect the democratic benefit of a thriving free press. We have a particular…

I’m perplexed by the District Court’s recent ruling in Apple Inc. v. Corellium, LLC that highlights an interesting tension in copyright law. A company can still violate copyright law even if a court has already found that it’s not infringing any copyright. Here’s how: Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal to circumvent digital locks that protect copyrighted material….

In a win for libraries and their users, Maryland is the first in the nation to enact a state law ensuring that libraries can license e-books and audiobooks under the same terms available to consumers. The new law (Maryland House Bill 518) requires that publishers offer reasonable terms to public libraries when negotiating licenses for digital content. As the president of the Maryland Library…

Spotify Provides New Access To Music For Podcasts. Reggie Ugwu with The New York Times featured the “Black Girl Songbook” podcast to demonstrate the benefits of an innovative new music arrangement between Spotify and podcasters. The arrangement gives podcast publishers access to full songs in the platform’s music catalogue, which are difficult and expensive to attain on their own. “Unlike…

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…