KEI TPP Briefing Note: Conflicts with US legal norms and TPP Article QQ.H.4: {Civil Procedures and Remedies / Civil and Administrative Procedures and Remedies} (*based upon May 11, 2015 TPP negotiating text.
Draft September 9, 2015
These were comments KEI provided to the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), for its consultation on expanding the mandate to include drugs to treat the hepatitis C virus.
To: consultation@medicinespatentpool.org.
Date: August 28, 2015
Re: Comments by James Love on behalf of KEI for the consultation regarding the MPP mandate to expand into HCV (and other diseases).
KEI has submitted joint comments with UAEM in this consultation. Here on behalf of KEI I make a few additional points.
Five groups, the Authors Alliance, Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) and New Media Rights have written to Ambassador Froman at USTR, asking that the TPP not adopt measures that would prevent the Congress from enacting legislation to limit the remedies for copyright infringement that were proposed by the Register of Copyrights in June 2015, to expand access to orphan copyrighted works.
A copy of the letter is available here:
On Wednesday, July 22, 2015, the Senate Veterans Committee held a mark-up to consider several bills. During the mark-up, Senator Sanders offered an amendment, attached below, that would create a compulsory license mechanism in the Department of Veterans Affairs, for patents on medical inventions. (See amendment text below). The motivation for the amendment was a crisis in the VA involving access to drugs for the hepatitis C virus (HCV).
On the topic of the TPP and copyright, KEI has sent a letter to Maria Pallante, the Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, Chief Policy Officer and Director for International Affairs for USPTO, and Nancy Weiss, Senior Advisor to the Chief Technology Officer, Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Executive Office of the President.
KEI asked these agencies to address certain issues in the TPP intellectual property chapter that relate to access to copyright issues, with a focus on orphan works, and uses by governments.
Attached below is a letter KEI sent to Emily Bleimund, Senior Policy Advisor for International Trade for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and several other U.S. trade officials. The letter addresses three issues in the TPP text:
The SCCR failed to adopt these recommendations. The dipcom in 2017 recommendations in Item 6 was too strong, and the exceptions recommendations for items 7 and 8 were too weak.
Also Attached as pdf
Proposed Recommendations SCCR/30
Proposed Recommendation Agenda Item 6:
Attached is the document the chair distributed as the summary of the week long SCCR 30 meeting. Continue Reading