Since December 2019, IPA has promoted advocacy initiatives and filed submissions to public consultations on copyright law and policy in Brazil, China, India, Ireland, Kenya, Philippines, Turkey.
We invite all IPA members to contact the Secretariat should there be any public consultations or other developments regarding copyright law and policy in your country.
At the international level, IPA continues to closely monitor developments at WIPO, including the election of a new Director General, progress on the work of the Standing Committee for Copyright and Related Rights, and IPA’s collaboration with capacity building projects such as the Publishers Circle. At UNESCO, IPA participates in stakeholder engagement initiatives on Open Science and Open Educational Resources.
IPA’s Copyright Committee (CC) normally meets twice a year, at Frankfurter Buchmesse and London Book Fair, with the London meeting having been cancelled due to the COVID 19 crisis. IPA’s Copyright Policy Working Group (CPWG), established in March 2019 as an operational group to exercise monitoring and oversight of IPA’s copyright activities continued to hold its online monthly meetings to strategise and oversee IPA’s advocacy interventions. The Working Group is led by Börsenverein’s Jessica Sänger, Chair of the Copyright Committee, and is composed of representatives of IPA members from Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, Kenya, Singapore, United Kingdom and United States of America, with observers from the Federation of European Publishers (FEP) and African Publishers Network (APNET). In its monthly online meetings, the CPWG’s work has been focused on actively monitoring copyright law and policy reviews and related areas such as Open Access and Artificial Intelligence policies across the world, including overseeing IPA’s submission to WIPO’s consultation on Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property.
On occasion of the World IP Day, which this year was celebrated in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jessica Sänger, Chair of the IPA’s Copyright Committee said: “This crisis has demonstrated just how much value publishers bring to so many aspects of our lives. It is the global copyright framework—and exclusive rights in particular—that enable publishers to play this vital role in society. This World Intellectual Property Day, we should celebrate copyright law and all the diverse literature, vital research and educational resources that it has helped create.”