International Journal of Communications Law & Policy

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	Issue 13 (Winter 2008-09)

INTRODUCTION - A2K3 SECTION
By Simone F. Bonetti

[Par. 1]

As we have done in the past, we have selected several papers, which have been submitted for the Conference and are part of this section. During these years, I have worked with my friend Boris in organizing all these issues on A2K. The contribution of Boris was essential in order to organize the selection of different papers on this matter. This issue is dedicated in his memory.

[Par. 2]

We have reached the "third" volume on A2K, which is aimed to enhance the values of democracy, human development, and social Justice. In fact, A2K could be defined as a "social movement and an approach to international and domestic policy" (1), discussing all these sensitive issues that globalization, intellectual property, information and communications technology have raised over these years. The premise of this discussion is that "we best serve both human rights and economic development through policies that make knowledge, knowledge creating tools, and knowledge embedded goods as widely available as possible for decentralized innovation and use" (2) . In the latest conference on A2K, the panellists discussed significant topics dealing with the Development Agenda of WIPO, A2K and human rights and global trade. Also the international scenario has been analysed with different approaches: Copyright Exceptions and Limitations, Media Communication Rights, Open Business Models, and Technologies for Access.

[Par. 3]

Intellectual property rights and A2K in developing countries could be considered as one of the most relevant issues on a global agenda, in consideration of the implications and of the leading role technology and intellectual property rights have nowadays. The first important contribution on this matter featured here is a new and remarkable book:

ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE IN BRAZIL:
NEW RESEARCH ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, INNOVATION AND DEVELOPMENT
Edited by Lea Shaver. New Haven: Information Society Project 2008. Pp. 232.

[Par. 4]

The meaning and the role of IP is immediately clear from the very introduction of the book: "Intellectual Property law exists to promote innovation and human development" and "IP policy must be judged by how well it advances or frustrates this goal" (3). These are benchmark elements in the light of the role IP plays in the 21st century in terms of information, technology, and knowledge. Governments, consistently with this innovative role of IP, are gradually expanding intellectually protections in order to create, preserve and extend the IP monopolies, also by signing momentous treaties at an international level.

[Par. 5]

This book clearly examines the IP rights from the perspective of the emerging countries known as the global South. In these countries, IP property regulation has a different history and, similarly, a different enforcement of intellectual property.

[Par. 6]

A team of scholars from the Fundação Getúlio Vargas law schools in Rio De Janeiro and São Paulo discusses the themes of intellectual property and development in Brazil. In the first chapter, the evaluation of open-business models is analyzed through the case-study of tecnobrega music scene in Belem. This model has been applied by the authors, Pedro Nicoletti Mizukami and Ronaldo Lemos, to the production of cultural materials, and the beneficial effect of this application has been remarkably pointed out as wider access to cultural material and broader participation in creativity. Nevertheless, according to the authors, tecnobrega is an example for open content communities, which are in desperate need of greater coordination and mobilization. These communities should not only act "in the realm of content production and sharing", but also "organize to stand in defense of legal environment that welcome social production of information in a cultural commons" (4). In fact, broader legislative and licensing efforts are necessary, according to the author, in order to legalize these social commons and create broader space for open business to flourish.

[Par. 7]

The second chapter, authored by Mizukami and Lemos along with Bruno Magrani and Carlos Affonso Pereira de Souza, is focused on exceptions and limitations to copyright. At an international level, the Berne convention and TRIPS Agreement have been analysed. On one hand, the general provision of these treaties regarding the extension of copyright (i.e. author's lifetime plus at least fifty years) has been criticized. On the other hand, the possibilities for other countries to create exceptions and limitations to this general rule have been deeply analyzed according to Brazilian legislation. In this context, the authors point out the user's rights through a review of the statutory law and two case studies. Nonetheless, in the authors' view, exceptions and limitations in Brazilian "copyright law are inadequate on many accounts. They are excessively restrictive and anachronistic, and in some cases incoherent, and offer no opportunity for balance through interpretation" (5). Therefore, exceptions and limitations should play the essential role of restoring balance in copyright law. In this scenario, the authors finally underline a new and important approach of the Government, which seems interested in a genuine and public discussion of Copyright policy, but it is still trying to limit reproduction, distribution, and modification of copyrighted content online. Any reform, according to the authors, is possible only if policymakers and legal scholars approach the issues related to copyright regulation as a part of broader information and cultural policy, promoting the interests of the public, on one hand, and the authors and publishers on the other.

[Par. 8]

The third chapter, authored by Alessandro Octaviani, focuses on the important issue of biotechnology in Brazil, which, due to the immense genetic diversity of its forests, is the most suitable place for technological innovations in medicine and agriculture. The main question debated in this chapter is: What is the proper IP regime applicable to biotechnology? The author demonstrates how the ONSA Network's Genoma Program, as an open collaborative approach, can be adopted in order to advance innovation in developing countries. The solution suggested by the author is in contrast with the mainstream approach, which is generally in favour of patent on genetic sequences.

[Par. 9]

The last chapter, authored by Monica Guise, Daniel Wang and Thana Cristina de Campos, underlines how intellectual property policy influences the products derived from innovation, and more specifically the impact of pharmaceutical patents on "access to medicines in Brazil". The evolution of the legislation and the relative effects in this sector is divided by the author in two phases: in the first, prior to 1996, when Brazilian law did not recognize patents on pharmaceutical and national health system the analysis is focused on how Brazil benefitted from a modern standard of care. The second phase, after 1996, characterized by a new legislation implementing the TRIPS agreement, has dramatically affected the previous regime, consequently diminishing the possibility to access a national health system because of a substantial increase of public spending on medicine. In this new phase, according to the authors, a renewed and steadfast action of the Government and the Courts is needed, especially in order to: a) limit inappropriate patent extensions; b) allow parallel importation; c) support a wider use by the Government of price negotiations; d) launch a new programme in order to promote access to medicine in Brazil.

[Par. 10]

As a whole, this book underlines how the A2K movement could contribute to the analysis of problems related to intellectual property regime, which affect the economic progress of developing countries, in order to propose possible solutions. Nevertheless, this book does not analyze other relevant questions which relate to intellectual property, such as "interoperability" and other matters that only been briefly mentioned in the books. Overall, these are the pros and cons of a book, which in its structure, is a noteworthy attempt to enhance the vital debate on A2K. A second edition of the book will be published in late 2009 by Bloomsbury Academic. Appropriately to the subject, the imprint follows an Open Access publishing model, allowing free download of the book from their website, while also selling print copies of the volume.

Notes

(1) Jack Balkin, Foreword to Access to Knowledge in Brazil: New Research on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Development 1, 1 (Lea Shaver ed., Information Society Project 2008), available at http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/ISP/A2KBrazil_bkmk.pdf (last visited May 2, 2009).

(2) Id., at 2.

(3) Lea Shaver, Introduction to Access to Knowledge in Brazil: New Research on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Development , supra note 1, at 7, 8.

(4) Pedro Nicoletti Mizukami and Ronaldo Lemos, From Free Software to Free Culture: The Emergence of Open Business, in Access to Knowledge in Brazil: New Research on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Development , supra note 1, at 25, 58-59.

(5) Pedro Nicoletti Mizukami et al., Exceptions and Limitations to Copyright in Brazil: A Call for Reform, in Access to Knowledge in Brazil: New Research on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Development , supra note 1, at 67, 114.

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