A group of intellectual property teachers have come together to propose amendments to the Copyright Act, 1957, in order to further creativity in the digital context. Entitled “Like-Minded IP Teachers’ Working Group on Intellectual Property and Public Interest [Copyright Amendment 2020-21),” the document published by them primarily proposes amendments to copyright exceptions and definitions. In their words, the purpose of the document is as follows:
“This document, prepared by a group of like-minded IP teachers, provides a list of amendments which are essential to make the Copyright Act, 1957 capable of furthering creativity in the digital context and addressing some of the access related challenges faced by the society, particularly in the context of a pandemic like Covid19.”
Accomplished IP teachers who have been making important contributions to the progress of IP in India are part of the group. It includes Prof. (Dr) N. S. Gopalakrishnan, Prof. (Dr) T. G. Agitha, Dr Arul George Scaria, Mr Yogesh Pai, Dr M. Sakthivel, Ms Anjana Girish, and Dr Vishnu Shankar. Some important changes proposed by them relate to:
Expansion of the fair dealing provision;
- Changes to education related exceptions to facilitate and promote online learning and education;
- Broadening the scope of the disability exception to bring it in line with the Marrakesh Treaty;
- Changes to facilitate access and dissemination of digital content by libraries;
- Provisions to facilitate text and data mining; and
- Changes to cover online broadcasting and dissemination of content.
The full document prepared by the group may be accessed at this link: www.bit.ly/COPYRIGHT2020. You may endorse the much-needed proposals of the group by visiting this link: www.bit.ly/SIGNCOPYRIGHT2020.
The amendments proposed by BananaIP’s team are available at: https://www.bananaip.com/ip-news-center/suggestions-on-the-amendment-of-the-copyright-act-1957/.
