Professor Brook Baker has written a 5800 word commentary on the negotiations for a treaty on copyright exceptions for persons who blind or have other disabilities. A copy of the paper is available here. The title of the paper is:

Challenges Facing a Proposed WIPO Treaty for Persons Who are Blind or Print Disabled
Professor Brook K. Baker
Law and Society Association Annual Meeting, June 2, 2013

Markus Beyrer thinks blind people should not have robust copyright exceptions, because it might set a precedent for patents on health or climate technologies

On May 10, 2013, a very revealing freedom of information request was made available from the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO). The request had been filed on April 14, 2013 by the journalist Glyn Moody, for:

A PDF version of our comments is available here.

People have until midnight May 10, 2013 to file comments, here:
http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=USTR-2013-0019-0001

This is the table of contents.

Comments on the Administration’s Intention to Enter Into Negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) Agreement
Response to Docket No. USTR-2013-0019

Introduction
Transparency

Note, we are adding some video clips from the meeting here:

May 13, 2013. KEI meeting on WIPO negotiations. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLw9jWaZPEpzafm6_61VtLb6aW-nFaINa

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On May 13, 2013, KEI will host a 12:30 to 2:30 brown bag lunch for a discussion of the WIPO Treaty for the Blind negotiations. It will be possible to attend in person, or follow the meeting on the telephone.

On April 15, 2013, the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) sent a letter to Teresa Stanek Rea, the Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and the Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, setting out the IPO "concerns" about the proposed WIPO treaty for persons who are blind or visually impaired. (Copy here).

On April 26, 2013 I attended a half day meeting on "A Human Rights Approach to Intellectual Property and Access to Medicines" organized by the Yale Law School and the Yale School of Public Health. These are notes from my interventions on behalf of KEI.

1. KEI does a lot of work on intellectual property rights that has impact on human rights. We do not always give prominence to human rights law or the language of human rights, although at times and in the right context, it can be important to do so.

Below is the PhRMA press release on the Special 301 Report.

Key points in the PhRMA release:

* PhRMA "dismayed that USTR did not grant an out-of-cycle review for India." PhRMA claims that India decisions involving German owned Bayer and Swiss owned Novartis "disproportionately impacted U.S. biopharmaceutical companies." (Perhaps PhRMA could have said, companies that have ownership claims on the US government).

Today USTR held a one hour "listening session" with several Washington, DC public interest groups. The topic was the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the European Union.

Below are several links to recent Huffington Post articles about the WIPO negotiations for a treaty on copyright exceptions for blind persons.

The first is a link to my report for HuffPo on the April 2013 negotiations, which have not gone well. The blog includes a discussion of some of the changes in key provisions of the text over time, and the recent quite harmful MPAA lobbying efforts.

Attached is the final version of the negotiating text that will be considered at the diplomatic conference in June 17 to 28, 2013 in Marrakesh, Morocco.

88 brackets in text, plus 17 "Alternative" versions of text.

8 references to: "do not conflict with the normal exploitation of the work," plus 3 additional references the "three-step test."

11 references to technological protection measures

The WBU just issued the attached press release. (On a related note, a video of their statement Saturday morning is available here).

WORLD BLIND UNION (WBU) press release 20th April 2013

Press Release – WIPO Negotiations Treaty for Blind people

A treaty for the blind or for the rights holders?

In Geneva this week the US government is taking a harder line in the WIPO negotiations for a treaty on copyright exceptions for the blind, and the reason is simple -- lobbyists for the MPAA and publishers have been all over the White House, demanding a retreat from compromises made in February, and demanding that the Obama Administration push new global standards for technical protection measures, strip the treaty text of any reference to fair use and fair dealing, and impose new financial liabilities on libraries that serve blind people.

This week the WIPO Standing Committee is holding a meeting to consider a possible treaty for broadcasting organizations. KEI thought this treaty negotiation had been blocked by fundamental differences over the purposes and scope of the treaty in 2007, but in the past few years the US Copyright office asked to put the issue back on the SCCR agenda, and subsequently Francis Gurry and Ambassador Trevor Clarke from the WIPO Secretariat have pushed to reach a conclusion, and more recently South Africa, Mexico, Japan and some other countries are now quite active, in favor of a new treaty.

In a bid to generate sympathy for its defeat in the Supreme Court of India over efforts to evergreen patent protection for the cancer drug imatinib (trade names Gleevec or Glivec) in developing countries, Novartis has been making increasingly spectacular claims as regards its investments in the development of the drug.