Is Protecting Copyright More Important Than Saving Lives During The COVID-19 Pandemic?

from the to-hollywood-it-is dept

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked terrible suffering across the world, we are fortunate that we already have several vaccines that have been shown to be highly effective in reducing the number of deaths and hospitalization rates. Discovering vaccines proved easier than expected, but ensuring that everyone – including people in developing countries – has access to them has proved much harder. The main reason for that is an intellectual monopoly: patents. Even though at least two of the main vaccines were developed almost entirely using public funds, which ought by rights to mean that the results are in the public domain, companies have obtained exclusionary patents on them. This has led to calls for a patent waiver of some kind to allow countries to produce their own supplies of medicines, without needing to pay licensing fees.

The proposal from India and South Africa to the World Trade Organization (WTO) does not mention patents at all, but lists instead what the waiver seeks to achieve: "the prevention, containment and treatment of COVID-19". A paper from Sean Flynn, Erica Nkrumah and Luca Schirru points out that works covered by copyright also need a waiver if we are to combat COVID-19 effectively. For example:

Researchers cannot contribute to COVID-19 responses if they cannot access the scientific literature they need to conduct their work. A global survey recently found that about 20% of researchers globally, and over 30% of researchers in South America (where copyright exceptions are the most limited), report that COVID has “completely” altered or halted their work.

Although some publishers did make publications relevant to COVID-19 freely available initially, the number of articles available is diminishing. Similarly, researchers need free access to material covered by copyright in order to carry out text and data mining, which uses computational analysis of large collections of material in order to reveal new insights. In fact:

The [Covid-19] outbreak was discovered by a Canadian text and datamining company, BlueDot, which tracks emerging health threats by analyzing “a variety of information sources, including chomping through 100,000 news reports in 65 languages a day.”

A less obvious problem caused by copyright concerns the labels and inserts that convey vital information about vaccines and drugs:

Even if a competing vaccine or treatment is lawfully produced with respect to patent law, there are opportunities for companies to use copyrights to halt or delay generic marketing. The issue arises because labels and package inserts – which convey information often required by regulators – may be considered protected by copyright in some countries. There is a history of pharmaceutical companies making such claims (ultimately ineffectively) in the U.S. A recent report by WTO and WIPO [World Intellectual Property Organization] explained that the practice of using copyrights to block generic production continues in other countries.

In each of these instances copyright is acting as an obstacle to the wider availability and use of vital medical interventions to people around the world. Hindering the ability to offer vaccines and treatments will inevitably lead to avoidable deaths from Covid-19. As well as granting waivers for patents, it's long overdue for the authorities concerned to grant them for key material covered by copyright too. If they don't, people in parts of the world without ready access to vaccines and treatments will have to conclude that saving their lives is regarded as less important than protecting intellectual monopolies.

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Originally posted to the Walled Culture blog.

Filed Under: copyright, covid-19, ip waiver, patents, waiver, wto

Critics Of Patent Waivers Are Claiming They Were Right... Despite No Patent Waiver Actually Issuing Yet

from the say-what-now? dept

We were surprised, but pleased, when the US announced plans to support a patent waiver for COVID-19 treatments and vaccines (over Hollywood's strenuous objections). As you'll recall, the TRIPS agreement (an onerous, oppressive set of "intellectual property" rules that many countries have agreed to) includes a "waiver" process, in which the WTO will effectively waive international patent protection on certain patented items in an emergency situation. The COVID-19 crisis seemed to fit the exact intent of the waiver process, and yet there's been a lot of pushback from patent and copyright maximalists who hate the very idea of waiving copyright or patent monopoly rights on anything for any reason at all.

Many of those against the waiver insisted that their reason for being against the waiver is that it wasn't patents that were holding up vaccines and treatments, but larger supply chain issues. They ignore, of course, that some of those supply chain issues are also because of overly aggressive intellectual property laws, or that both things can be true. Either way, Michael Rosen, who insisted that a waiver was a terrible idea, has now penned a piece for The Hill insisting that his view has proved correct because the waiver process has done nothing to help deal with COVID-19.

Of course, the reason it's done nothing is because people like the author have been getting groups to protest the waiver and so it hasn't even been approved yet. I mean, the piece even admits that the problem here is not the waiver, so much as the slowness of the WTO in approving it.

... the WTO is uniquely unsuited to move quickly on the proposal given its bureaucratic and consensus-driven nature. Opposition to the waiver proposal in late July, primarily from the European Union (EU), has delayed further discussion until at least October, because “disagreement persisted on the fundamental question of what is the appropriate and most effective way to address the shortage and inequitable access to vaccines and other COVID-related products.” By the time the TRIPS waiver receives proper consideration, the Delta wave may have passed.

But... that's not an argument against the waiver. It's an argument for the WTO to get its shit together, and for people to stop trying to oppose the damn waiver.

The other two reasons Rosen gives are no better.

First, the suspension of intellectual property (IP) rights will not quickly deliver shots in arms in the developing world, as the past four months have amply shown.

No one is saying that's the only thing that needs to be done -- but, also, how the hell can you say that it won't deliver shots when the waiver still hasn't come to pass yet?!?

... generic manufacturers cannot simply flip a switch and begin producing doses; instead, they must master the formulation of complex compounds (some of which involve mRNA), and their medicines must undergo local regulatory scrutiny for safety and effectiveness.

Yeah. You know what would help them get the ball rolling so that they can get those processes up and running sooner? Not having to worry about bogus patent infringement claims.

And, of course, this kind of thing wouldn't be complete without a bogus claim of the great innovation incentive that patents bring.

Finally, the suspension of vaccine-related IP rights fundamentally undermines the global innovation regime that brought us these miraculous drugs in the first place — wildly effective vaccines developed in absolute record time.

That's bullshit. The incentive to produce these vaccines was not patents, but saving the damn world. Second, the first of those vaccines, from Moderna, was developed in just two days because Chinese researchers uploaded the details of the coronavirus and made it openly available to researchers, rather than locking it up. In other words, it wasn't locking down information with patents that got us this vaccine, it was the opposite.

Filed Under: covid, ip waiver, patent waiver, patents, trips, vaccines, wto

Australia Triumphs Definitively In Long-Running Battle With Big Tobacco Over Plain Packs For Cigarettes

from the no-sacred-right-to-use-trademarks dept

Techdirt has written a lot about corporate sovereignty -- also known as "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS) -- which allows companies to haul countries before special tribunals for alleged loss of profits caused by new laws or regulations. One industry's use of ISDS that Techdirt has been following particularly closely is tobacco. As a typically brilliant John Oliver segment explained back in 2015, Big Tobacco companies have used corporate sovereignty clauses in international trade and investment deals to sue countries for daring to try to regulate cigarettes, advertising or packaging. Thankfully, that didn't turn out so well. Philip Morris tried to use ISDS to roll back plain-pack laws, but cases against Australia and Uruguay were both thrown out. The tide against the use of corporate sovereignty by tobacco companies to undo health protection laws has turned so much that special carve-outs have been added to trade deals to prevent this kind of corporate bullying.

But the tobacco industry had one last trick up its sleeve. John Oliver noted five years ago that Big Tobacco persuaded three countries -- Honduras, Dominican Republic and Ukraine -- to file complaints with the World Trade Organization (WTO) against Australia, claiming the plain-packaging law violates trade agreements. As an article in the Financial Review explains, they were later joined by Indonesia and Cuba. A dispute panel backed Australia in June 2018, but Honduras and the Dominican Republic appealed against that decision. Now the WTO's Appellate Body has made its final ruling:

The Appellate Body confirmed the previous WTO ruling, which said that when Australia prevented tobacco producers from differentiating themselves from their rivals via brand marketing, this wasn't necessarily a restriction on trade.

It also rejected the argument that raising the purchasing age or increasing tobacco taxes were less trade-restrictive options that Canberra could have pursued instead of the plain packaging rules.

And it said that the international intellectual property regime didn't give tobacco companies a right to use a trademark; it merely stopped competitors from using it. So there was no obligation on Australia to allow a company to use its trademark, and the plain packaging regime hadn't "unjustifiably" encumbered companies' trademark usage.

That last point is particularly interesting. As far back as 2011 the tobacco companies tried to argue that "plain packaging has a smothering effect on companies' logos and trademarks." The WTO has just stamped on the idea that companies have some kind of sacred right to use their trademarks, which could have wider implications.

As for the main attempt to get rid of plain packs in Australia, that has now failed definitively -- there is no way to appeal against the WTO Appellate Body's ruling. That means that many more countries around the world are likely to bring in plain-pack laws -- a real victory for Australia's tenacious pursuit of this important health measure.

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Filed Under: australia, health, plain packs, trade agreements, wto

How We Got To The Point That Hollywood Is Trying To Attack The Internet Via NAFTA

from the a-little-history-lesson dept

Visit EveryoneCreates.org to read stories of creation empowered by the internet, and share your own! »

Last week we announced our new site EveryoneCreates.org, featuring stories from many different creators of music, books, movies and more about how important the internet and fair use have been to their creations. As we noted, the reason for the site is that the legacy copyright gatekeepers at the MPAA and the RIAA have been using the Trump-requested NAFTA renegotiations to try to undermine both fair use and internet safe harbors by positing a totally false narrative that the internet has somehow "harmed" content creators.

Yet, as we know, and as the stories from various artists show, nothing is further from the truth. For most artists and content creators, the internet has been a huge boon. It has helped them create new art, share it and distribute it to other people, build a fan base and connect with them, and make money selling either their work or related products and services. As we've discussed before, in the past, for most artists, if you did not find a giant gatekeeper to take you on, you were completely out of the market. There was very little "long tail" to be found in most creative industries, because you either were "chosen" by a gatekeeper or you went home and did something else. But the internet has changed that. It has allowed people to go directly to their audiences, or to partner with platforms that help anyone create, distribute, promote and monetize. Indeed, the internet has undoubtedly helped everyone reading this to create art -- whether for profit or just for fun. And if that's the case with you, please share your story.

But it is worth taking a step back and asking an even larger question: how the hell did we get here? How did we get to the point that the MPAA and the RIAA are using NAFTA negotiations to try to undermine the internet. Rest assured: there's a long, long history at play here, and it's important to learn about it. The idea that you can or should regulate the internet or intellectual property in trade agreements should seem strange to most people -- especially as most trade agreements these days are about increasing free trade by removing barriers to trade, and copyright by its very nature is mercantile-style trade protectionism that places artificial limits and costs on trade that might otherwise be cheaper.

An excellent history on this topic comes from the aptly named 2002 book Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy by Peter Drahos and John Braithweaite. It tells the story of how a concerted effort by legacy copyright maximalist organizations laid the groundwork for making sure that copyrights and patents were always included in trade agreements, by getting them in as a key part of the World Trade Organization and by the creation of TRIPS -- Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. The book details how the legacy industries turned "intellectual property" from a question of benefiting the public to a solely commercial arena of corporate ownership and trade.

Once that was in place, these same industries wasted little time in exploiting the reframing of issues around copyright and patents. Famously, the DMCA itself was created in this manner. The record labels and movie studios had a friend in the Clinton White House in Bruce Lehman, who wrote a white paper in 1995 requesting draconian changes to copyright law targeting the internet. However, he found little support for it in Congress. Five years ago, Lehman himself admitted that when Congress refused to act he did "an end-run around Congress" by going to Geneva and pushing for a trade agreement via the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) which required DMCA-like copyright rules.

With that treaty in hand, Lehman and his Hollywood friends came back to Congress, insisting that our "international obligations" now required Congress to create and pass the DMCA, or we'd suddenly face all sorts of trade and diplomatic problems for failing to live up to those "international obligations" that they themselves had put into the trade agreement. Indeed, ever since then, nearly every international trade agreement has included some crazy provisions related to copyright and patents and other IP rights -- all designed to effectively launder these laws through the highly opaque international trade negotiation process, and then insist that legislatures in various countries simply must ratchet up their laws to meet those obligations.

Given all that, there's at least some irony in the fact that these same groups that forced the DMCA on Congress through an international trade agreement back in the mid-1990s are now trying to use a different trade agreement 20 years later to force changes to that very same law (and others). Once again, the process is opaque. And once again, the industry is well connected and represented on a variety of the "Industry Trade Advisory Committees" (ITACs), giving them much greater access to the details of the negotiations while the public is kept in the dark.

But the history here is clear. Moving copyright into trade agreements was a purposeful move, pushed for by legacy industries so they could promote their favored protectionist laws around the globe, in part by moving them away from being designed for the public's benefit and towards a world in which information and knowledge was considered to be privatized, owned, and locked up by default. It ignored the fact that, often, the public can benefit the most when information is open and widely shared. And, decades later, we're still dealing with the fallout from these bad decisions.

And that's why it's so important for policy makers to understand that it's complete hogwash to argue that the RIAA and MPAA are "representing artists" in trying to undermine the internet this way. Most artists recognize that the internet and various platforms are a key part of their ability to create, distribute, share, and support their artwork these days -- and they are not being represented at the NAFTA negotiating table.

Share your story at EveryoneCreates.org to let policymakers know how important an open internet and fair use is to your own creativity.

Filed Under: cda 230, copyright, dmca 512, everyone creates, fair use, international trade agreements, patents, safe harbors, trade agreements, wipo, wto

Antigua Says It Will Certainly, Absolutely, Definitely Use WTO Permission To Ignore US Copyright And Set Up A Pirate Site, Maybe

from the don't-make-us-do-this dept

One of the longest-running, and most extraordinary, sagas on Techdirt concerns the island of Antigua. Over 13 years ago, the country filed a complaint at the World Trade Organization (WTO) over the US ban on online gambling, which Antigua said violated a trade agreement between the two countries. Long story short, the WTO not only agreed, but said that the Caribbean country could ignore US copyrights, and set up a WTO-authorized pirate site to obtain the $21 million in WTO sanctions that the US was refusing to pay as compensation for blocking Antigua's online gambling sites. In 2013, Antigua was still saying it was definitely going to do this if it couldn't come to some agreement with the US on the matter, and the US was still refusing to settle.

Three years later, Antigua -- officially known as Antigua and Barbuda -- has just told a meeting of the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) the following:

Antigua and Barbuda now informs the DSB that, if an appropriate and beneficial settlement is not reached with the US by year-end, the government will be compelled to take action to enforce the suspension of copyright on the sale of US intellectual property, consistent with the award of the DSB.

That's from a copy of Antigua's statement (pdf), obtained by IP Watch. The spokesperson claims the country has suffered serious losses as a result of the US gambling ban:

Over that entire 12-year period, my small country with a Gross Domestic Product of just $1 billion has been deprived of trade revenues which now exceed $250 million.

The statement points out that for the US, $250 million represents just 0.0003% of its annual GDP, and that over the last 12 years, the US has enjoyed a trade surplus of $1 billion with Antigua. Moreover:

While the US continues to act in contradiction of the rulings and recommendations stipulated by DSB concerning my country, it remains the most active user of the institution's Dispute Settlement System.

As a result of the continuing US intransigence, Antigua feels it has no choice but to take the momentous step of absolutely definitely setting up that WTO-authorized piracy site -- just like the last time it said that.

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Filed Under: antigua, copyright, piracy, trade, us, wto

US Suddenly Discovers Why Supranational Tribunals Are A Problem, Just As It Starts Losing In Them

from the probably-just-a-coincidence dept

There's a bit of a battle going on in an obscure part of the World Trade Organization (WTO) called the Appellate Body, which has extremely wide-ranging powers within the WTO:

It is a standing body of seven persons that hears appeals from reports issued by panels in disputes brought by WTO Members. The Appellate Body can uphold, modify or reverse the legal findings and conclusions of a panel, and Appellate Body Reports, once adopted by the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), must be accepted by the parties to the dispute.

Here's what's been happening, as reported by Bloomberg:

The U.S. won't support the reappointment of Seung Wha Chang of South Korea to the World Trade Organization (WTO) appellate body, a U.S. official said at a meeting in Geneva.

"We do not consider that his service reflects the role assigned to the appellate body by WTO members in the WTO agreements," Deputy U.S. Permanent Representative Chris Wilson told members of the WTO dispute settlement body (DSB) May 23. "Any failure to follow scrupulously the role we members have assigned through these agreements undermines the integrity of, and support for, the WTO dispute settlement system."

As the article explains, that's not going down too well with other WTO members, including Brazil, the European Union, Japan, and South Korea, who are traditionally allies of the US in trade matters. So what exactly has Chang done to incur the wrath of the US?

The U.S. said it was troubled by four recent panel decisions that Chang was involved in because they "raised systemic concerns about the disregard for the proper role of the appellate body and the WTO dispute settlement system."

Which seems to be a polite way of saying that Chang hasn't been toeing the US line. That's confirmed by the following section from a WTO news item about the DSB meeting where this argument took place:

Canada, the European Union, India and Viet Nam added that the United States' statement of opposition [to Chang] based on previous Appellate Body decisions could create a dangerous precedent for other reappointment proceedings and affect an Appellate Body member's decision-making during their first term.

Here's one of those panel decisions that the US doesn't like:

In the fourth ruling -- which upheld China's allegations about U.S. duties on non-market economies -- the appellate panel "took a very problematic and erroneous approach" that risks turning the DSB into "one that would substitute the judgment of WTO adjudicators for that of a member's domestic legal system as to what is lawful under that member's domestic law," Wilson said.

The interesting part is the bit at the end there, where the US complains that the WTO's dispute settlement system is effectively overruling national law. Techdirt readers will recognize that as a common complaint about the tribunals that adjudicate on disputes between investors and governments -- the so-called "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS) system, aka corporate sovereignty. Until now, the US has been a solid supporter of these tribunals, so it's rather significant to see it moaning about the problem of uppity adjudicators here. It raises the question why the US is unhappy with the DSB tribunal, but doesn't seem to have a problem with those used in ISDS.

It might have something to do with the fact that the US has never lost a corporate sovereignty case -- something it uses to justify the inclusion of ISDS in TPP and TAFTA/TTIP -- but is increasingly on the wrong end of decisions at the WTO. As to why the US never loses ISDS cases, Ante Wessels, writing on the FFII.org blog, has a provocative theory: he says the "Investor-to-state dispute settlement is a rigged system" that is tilted in favor of the US. Whether or not you agree with his analysis, it's certainly interesting to see how the US seems to be changing its mind on the value of supranational tribunals that can ride roughshod over domestic legal systems now that it finds itself on the losing side.

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Filed Under: corporate sovereignty, isds, seung wha chang, trade agreements, tribunals, us, wto

India Finally Bows To US Pressure: Promises Not To Use Compulsory Licensing For Drugs

from the declaration-of-war-on-poor-cancer-patients dept

Techdirt has been covering India's complex relationship with pharma patents since at least 2009. In particular, we've been following for years India's use of compulsory licenses to provide its people with access to life-saving drugs at affordable prices. Naturally, Big Pharma companies in both the US and EU hate that, not least because it might encourage other countries to do the same. As a result, the US pharmaceutical industry in particular has been applying political pressure to get India to stop using compulsory licenses, even though they are a perfectly legitimate policy tool under the WTO TRIPS Agreement. Two years ago, Techdirt noted that India was already becoming more cautious on the compulsory licensing front, and a new report from Reuters suggests it may finally have bowed to US pressure:

India has given private assurances that it will not grant licences allowing local firms to override patents and make cheap copies of drugs by big Western drugmakers, a U.S. business advocacy group said.

The comments were revealed in a submission last month by the U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC) to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), which is reviewing global intellectual property laws for an annual report identifying trade barriers to U.S. companies.

There's been no official confirmation from the Indian government of that decision, nor an explanation of why it has decided to give in, assuming it has. The Reuters article mentions the fact that India had been placed for two years in a row on the infamous Special 301 Report's "Priority Watch List". That's one of the favorite ways in which PhRMA, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, tries to bully countries -- or even entire continents -- into doing its bidding. But giving up compulsory licenses just to stay off the Special 301 naughty step seems an incredibly high price to pay, for reasons explained by Knowledge Ecology International (KEI):

"If such an agreement [between the Indian government and the US drug industry] in fact exists, this is extremely troubling news ... this sort of pressure is basically a declaration of war on poor cancer patients," KEI said in its own submission to the USTR last week.

Given the USIBC document that Reuters says it has seen, it seems likely that the Indian government has indeed given some sort of assurance to the US companies. But the fact that it has been kept quiet shows that the politicians are fully aware of how unpopular the move will be once the Indian public finds out about it. That provides some hope the policy could be reversed if enough people in India start complaining, as happened recently with software patents.

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Filed Under: compulsory licenses, drugs, health, india, pharmaceuticals, trips, wto