WIPO Archive

Chairman Manalo's Table of WIPO Development Agenda proposals, PCDA 3 February 2007
EFF Statement In Support Of Chile's Proposal For Harmonized International Copyright Exceptions For Libraries And Archives, The Disabled, And Educational Uses Presented At WIPO SCCR [PDF] November 22, 2005
EFF Summary of Status of Database Protection in the United States, prepared for Eleventh Session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights of the World Intellectual Property Organization [PDF] June 7, 2004

WIPO Copyright Treaties and Database Protections

Consumer Project on Technology's primer on the proposed WIPO treaty on copyright and "database protection".
Final WIPO Treaty

19980604_eff-aclu_bliley.letter: Letter of ACLU and EFF to House Commerce Committee chairman Rep. Tom Bliley urging rejection of administration-backed WIPO treaty implementation bill (that threatens fair use, encryption, security and privacy), and urging support of an alternative version that does not have these flaws.
dfc_wipo_19961122.comments: Comments of the Digital Future Coalition (which includes EFF) regarding the copyright "reform" and "database protection" draft treaty proposed by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
eff_wipo_19961122.comments: Electronic Frontier Foundation response to PTO Request for Comments on proposed Sui Generis Database Protection Treaty. EFF advising removing the treaty from the agenda of the Geneva Diplomatic Conference on Certain Copyright and Neighboring Rights Questions, and outlines several serious problems with the proposed treaty, aside from the fact that it is an attempt by the US Administration to pull and "end run" around our own legislature. These problems include: undermining of several Supreme Court rulings; making facts rather than expressions copyrightable; making non-creative assemblages of obvious information copyrightable; encouragement of monopolism; undermining of the public's fair use rights to government information maintained by contractors; undermining of the Freedom of Information Act; vagueness in definitions to the extent that "database" can mean almost anything; providing for the copyright of even minute amounts of information in a database; establishing essentially infinite-duration copyright by allowing a minor change to a "database" to reset the period of copyright coverage; attempting to hold online system operators liable for the actions of users beyond their control; and finally prohibiting necessary reverse engineering, cryptanalysis and software recovery by greatly over-broad criminalization of tools to perform these tasks if they can also conceivably be used for copyright infringement. In short, the treaty draft is ill-conceived, and caters to the wishes of a small number of corporations at the expense of the entire public. a database; establishing essentially infinite-duration copyright by allowing a minor change to a "database" to reset the period of copyright coverage; attempting to hold online system operators liable for the actions of users beyond their control; and finally prohibiting necessary reverse engineering, cryptanalysis and software recovery by greatly over-broad criminalization of tools to perform these tasks if they can also conceivably be used for copyright infringement. In short, the treaty draft is ill-conceived, and caters to the wishes of a small number of corporations at the expense of the entire public. The RFC these comments are a response to is available in the file pto_wipo_19961117.rfc
1996_wipo_copyright_treaty.draft: World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) draft treaty "reworking" copyright in various ways that threaten the public interest, including the creation of a new intellectual property right to database content. EFF has prepared an analysis of the various serious problems with this proposal (see the file eff_wipo_19961122.comments)
hr2674_1995.bill: The Intellectual Property Antitrust Protection Act of 1995. Bill designed to overturn caselaw requiring that companies that have a monopoly or other anti-competitive position provide, in some circumstances, equal access to whatever intellectual property they have that is causing the monopoly, for their competitors. (An example is network TV listings - courts have held that TV networks cannot prevent third parties from publishing listings of what is going to be shown by networks, since this prevents competition in the TV guide market and that the networks must provide this information equitably, even to direct competitors - despite any intellectual property rights the networks might otherwise have to this information. This bill is in response to European Union cases, and attempts to undermine the court rulings to advance the purposes of HR3531 and the WIPO intellectual property treaty 3531 would enable. Without HR2674, fear intellectual proeperty-holding mega-corporations, the WIPO treaty is not iron clad enough against fair use rights and anti-trust law that protects the public interest from monopolistic practices these companies wish to engage in.
hr2674_hyde_19951120.comments: Rep. Henry Hyde's introductory comments regarding bill HR2674, the Intellectual Property Antitrust Protection Act of 1995
hr3531_1996.bill: Database Investment and Intellectual Property Antipiracy act of 1996 (H.R.3531). This is the implementing legislation for the WIPO copyright & database protection treaty, submitted to the last Congress. It contains no fair use rights for data stored in databases, and is beset by other problems that would harm the public interest.
pto_wipo_19961117.rfc: US Patent & Trademark Office RFC on the WIPO treaty draft regarding "updated" intellectual property international law, including new "database protection" clauses. Formally, this document is the "Request for Comments on the Chairman's Text of the Diplomatic Conference on Certain Copyright and Neighboring Rights Questions, To Be Held in Geneva From December 2 to 20, 1996". EFF's response to this Request for Comments is available in the file eff_wipo_19961122.comments