Last week, PIJIP, the American University International Law Review, and the University of Amsterdam Institute for Information Law hosted a three-day set of meetings, seminars and a public symposium on the topic of the Right to Research in International Copyright. The events were sponsored as part of the Annual Meeting of the Global Expert Network on Copyright User Rights, supported by the Arcadia Fund and PIJIP’s Project on the Right to Research in International Copyright. 

The events included a full day of presentations of works-in-progress from scholars from 19 countries, followed by a public symposium of the American University International Law Review. The papers and presentations focused on the question of how international copyright law should protect rights to produce and access research materials, including for modern uses such as text and data mining and machine learning. 

PIJIP Director Sean Flynn opened the conference, tracing the history of the event back to the first Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest and the 2011 launch of the User Rights Network, both of which “sought to shift our focus away from criticizing the IP owners’ enforcement agenda toward what we termed a ‘positive agenda’ for our work.”

One chapter of the Washington Declaration on IP and the Public Interest that the meeting produced was headed strengthening limitations and exceptions, which sounded many of the themes and goals we remain committed to today. From that declaration of purpose, a Network was formed that gave ourselves a name – the Global Expert Network on Copyright User Rights. Rights in the copyright system, we claimed, were not only the possession of publishers and content producers. Users have rights, including fundamental human rights, that must be served in a just and efficient copyright system.  Exploring that confluence of human rights and IP is a core theme of this meeting.

Once completed, papers from the conference will be published in open access form on PIJIP’s Working Paper Series as well as in a forthcoming volume of the American University International Law review.

Scholars who participated in the meetings included: 

• Faith Aboyeji, Dalhousie University, Canada
• Patricia Aufderheide, American University
• Margo Bagley, Emory University
• Klaus D. Beiter, North-West University
• Enrico Bonadio, City, University of London
• Carolina Botero, Karisma Foundation
• Annemarie Bridy, Stanford University 
• Brandon Butler, University of Virginia
• Michael Carroll, American University Washington College of Law
• Ben Cashdan, Black Stripe Foundation
• Or Cohen-Sasson, Tel Aviv University
• Jorge Contreras, University of Utah
• Carys Craig, Osgoode Hall Law School
• Naama Daniel, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 
• Jeremy DeBeer, University of Ottawa
• Patricia Myrna Díaz Charquero, DATA Uruguay
• Orit Fischman - Afori, College of Management
• Christophe Geiger, LUISS Guido Carli University, Italy
• Aditya Gupta, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
• Simone Hammersley, ReCreate South Africa / Black Stripe
• Christian Handke, Erasmus University Rotterdam
• Lawrence Helfer, Duke University 
• Bernt Hugenholtz, University of Amsterdam
• Matías Jackson, University of the Republic (Uruguay)
• Peter Jaszi, American University Washington College of Law
• Justin  Jutte, Bernd Justin Jütte, Sutherland School of Law University College Dublin, Ireland
• Anthony Kakooza, School of Law, Makerere University
• Joe Karaganis, Open Syllabus
• Ariel Katz, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto
• Alice Lana, Internet Lab, Brazil    
• Thomas Margoni, CiTiP, KU Leuven
• Péter Mezei, University of Szeged
• Chidi Oguamanam, University of Ottawa                
• Ruth Okediji, Harvard Law School              
• Desmond Oriakhogba, University of Venda, South Africa
• Alexandre Pesserl, GEDAI / UFPR, Brazil
• João Quintais, Institute for Information Law (IViR), University of Amsterdam
• Jerome Reichman, Duke Law
• Andrew Rens, Research ICT Africa
• Allan Rocha de Souza, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
• Rachael Samberg, UC Berkeley
• Sanya Samtani, University of Pretoria
• Martin Senftleben, Institute for Information Law (IViR), University of Amsterdam
• Caterina Sganga, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna
• Anubha Sinha, Centre for Internet and Society, India
• Maria Vasquez Callo-Müller, University of Lucerne
• Timothy Vollmer, UC Berkeley
• John Willinsky, Stanford University
• Michele Woods, World Intellectual Property Organization