U.S. Copyright Office Joins Message on International Women’s Day 2022; U.S. Copyright Office, Issue No. 948, March 8, 2022

U.S. Copyright Office, Issue No. 948 ; U.S. Copyright Office Joins Message on International Women’s Day 2022

"The U.S. Copyright Office has joined with national and regional intellectual property offices from around the world as well as with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to issue a message in support of women creators and innovators. This year’s theme for International Women’s Day is “Gender Equality for a Sustainable Tomorrow.”"

International exchange: Promoting the inclusion of women in intellectual property; United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), November 16, 2021 4 PM - 6 PM ET

United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO); International exchange: Promoting the inclusion of women in intellectual property

"Studies of patent data conducted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and others have shown that women inventors are significantly underrepresented in the patent system worldwide. Despite an increased number of women entering the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields in recent years, there is still a large gap between the number of women entering these fields and men. This has led to fewer women participating in the intellectual property (IP) system overall.

Register today to hear presentations by representatives of IP offices from around the world, who will discuss these trends and explain how some countries have succeeded in increasing the participation rate of women in their IP systems. Topics will include:

• Strategies for increasing the participation of women in the IP system
• How to recruit, retain, and promote women in IP fields

You will hear from leading officials from the USPTO, IP Australia, the Canadian IP Office, the IP Office of the Philippines, the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property, the IP Office of New Zealand, the Industrial Property Protection Directorate of Jordan, and other national offices."

Open Educational Resources Are ‘Moving Up the Adoption Ladder’ Around the World; EdSurge, March 3, 2020

Rebecca Koenig, EdSurge; Open Educational Resources Are ‘Moving Up the Adoption Ladder’ Around the World

"Open educational resources have gone global and may help make learning more accessible, equitable and inclusive around the world.

So says the new Educause Horizon report, which identifies technologies and trends that are changing higher education.

This year’s forecast was created by nearly five dozen higher education experts, a third of them from institutions outside of the U.S. OER was one of six “emerging technologies and practices” the panelists highlighted as most likely to significantly influence postsecondary teaching and learning in the future...

At the October 2019 UNESCO General Conference meeting, multiple governments agreed to adopt a set of legal and technical standards for OER materials so that they can be better shared across borders."

Study of Underrepresented Classes Chasing Engineering and Science Success (SUCCESS) Act of 2018; U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, October 2019

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, October 2019; Study of Underrepresented Classes Chasing Engineering and Science Success (SUCCESS) Act of 2018.

"America’s long-standing economic prosperity and global technological leadership depend on a strong and vibrant innovation ecosystem. To maximize the nation’s potential, it is critically important that all Americans have the opportunity to innovate, seek patent protection for their inventions, start new companies, succeed in established companies, and achieve the American dream. 

The Study of Underrepresented Classes Chasing Engineering and Science Success (SUCCESS) Act of 2018 directed the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), in consultation with the administrator of the Small Business Administration, to prepare a report that: 

• Identifies publicly available data on the number of patents annually applied for and obtained by women, minorities, and veterans 
• Identifies publicly available data on the benefits of increasing the number of patents applied for and obtained by women, minorities, and veterans and the small businesses owned by them
• Provides legislative recommendations for how to promote the participation of women, minorities, and veterans in entrepreneurship activities and increase the number of women, minorities, and veterans who apply for and obtain patents. 

Final report to Congress

The USPTO's SUCCESS Act report was transmitted to Congress on October 31, 2019. Among its major findings:

• A review of literature and data sources found that there is a limited amount of publicly available information regarding the participation rates of women, minorities, and veterans in the patent system.
• The bulk of the existing literature focuses on women, with a very small number of studies focused on minorities, and only some qualitative historical information on U.S. veteran inventor-patentees.
• One of the most comprehensive studies focused on women inventor-patentees is "Progress and Potential: a profile of women inventors on U.S. patents," a report published by the USPTO in February 2019. It found that women comprised 12% of all inventors named on U.S. patents granted in 2016, up from 5% in the mid-1980s.
• Overall, there is a need for additional information to determine the participation rates of women, minorities, and veterans in the patent system.
• The report concludes with a list of six new USPTO initiatives and five legislative recommendations for increasing the participation of women, minorities, and veterans as inventor-patentees and entrepreneurs."

Addressing the Crisis in Academic Publishing; Inside Higher Ed, November 5, 2018

Hans De Wit and Phillip G. Altbach and Betty Leask, Inside Higher Ed; Addressing the Crisis in Academic Publishing

[Kip Currier: Important reading and a much-needed perspective to challenge the status quo!

I just recently was expressing aspects of this article to an academic colleague: For too long the dominant view of what constitutes "an academic" has been too parochial and prescriptive.

The academy should and must expand its notions of teaching, research, and service, in order to be more truly inclusive and acknowledge diverse kinds of knowledge and humans extant in our world.]

"We must find ways to ensure that equal respect, recognition and reward is given to excellence in teaching, research and service by institutional leaders, governments, publishers, university ranking and accreditation schemes."

WIPO Traditional Knowledge Committee Begins Work On Core Issues; Indigenous Peoples May Be Left Out; Intellectual Property Watch, August 27, 2018

Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch;

WIPO Traditional Knowledge Committee Begins Work On Core Issues; Indigenous Peoples May Be Left Out

"The World Intellectual Property Organization’s committee seeking to find solutions against misappropriation of traditional knowledge opened this morning. While delegates are expected to negotiate wording of a potential treaty, the fund allowing indigenous peoples to participate in the discussions is empty with no foreseeable new donors, described by the chair as a historical situation. The committee is also trying to agree on recommendations for the upcoming WIPO General Assembly next month. On core issues, such as what the protection should cover, who would benefit from it, and under which conditions, delegates still have to find common positions."

Open science: Sharing is caring, but is privacy theft? by David Mehler and Kevin Weiner; PLOS Neuro Community Blog, January 31, 2018

Emilie Reas, PLOS Neuro Community Blog; Open science: Sharing is caring, but is privacy theft? by David Mehler and Kevin Weiner

"As we are actively figuring out the balance between transparency and collaboration in research, we thought it was worth reaching out to six of our colleagues who have thought extensively about OS. We hope that additional scientists will weigh in with further insight regarding this balance not only in human brain mapping, but also in other scientific fields.

Specifically, we asked them: What are the main challenges in moving toward Open Science and how can we meet them? Here are their responses:

Kirstie Whitaker (University of Cambridge, Department of Psychiatry):

“Change is coming. Before we continue, let’s define some terms for potential readers: Open Science is an umbrella term that can mean different things to different people. Open access research allows everyone to learn from scientific work (particularly that paid for by the tax payer). Open educational resources mean we don’t re-invent the wheel when we teach others about our work. Open source materials are ones that allow you to see inside, and improve, the black box. Open dataallows researchers to verify our work, and conduct analyses that could not be carried out by one group alone.

Open Science also means open to everyone. We can use the power of curious non-experts through Citizen Science projects. The Open Neuroimaging Laboratory was a finalist for the Open Science Prizeand sought to “lower the barriers for researchers, students, and citizen scientists to help scientific discovery”. We can look to other neuroscience projects such as Eye Wire and FoldIt for inspiration in the future.

Finally, Open Science means open for all. Whose voices are not currently represented well in our field of study? Who is not advancing to tenured positions? How do we ensure that researchers in the developing world are able to contribute to our quest to understand the human brain? All of the open practices above facilitate the inclusion of under-represented minorities, but it will require ongoing focus and consideration to create an equitable community. That’s my biggest challenge: addressing my implicit (and explicit) biases to ensure we have bigger, better and more diverse ideas in the future.

I would like to live in a world where helping to advance the boundary of scientific knowledge is rewarded through new findings and by confirming (or not) already published results irrespective of who owns the data.”"

Law Professors Address RCEP Negotiators on Copyright; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF, February 24, 2017

Jeremy Malcolm, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); 

Law Professors Address RCEP Negotiators on Copyright

"Next week the latest round of secret negotiations of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) kicks off in Kobe, Japan. Once the shy younger sibling of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the recent death of the TPP has thrust RCEP further into the spotlight, and raised the stakes both for its sixteen prospective parties, and for lobbyists with designs to stamp their own mark on the text's intellectual property and e-commerce chapters.

Our last analysis of RCEP pointed out some of the ways in which the then-current leaked text represented an improvement on the TPP, but how other parts of it—including those on copyright enforcement—repeated its mistakes and failed to seize opportunities for improvement. This week, over 60 copyright scholars released an open letter that sets out their views of what negotiators ought to do in order to address these problems...

The RCEP negotiators evidently haven't taken the failure of the TPP to heart, or they would be doing more to ensure that their negotiations are inclusive, transparent, and strike a fair balance between the interests of copyright owners and those of the public."