Access To Knowledge In Brazil

"Brazil is one of the world's most productive crucibles for new ideas and practices in innovation and collaboration. This meticulously researched book provides a sweeping tour of the issues arising form that leadership." Jonathan Zittrain - Professor, Harvard Law School "As policy makers around the world grapple with how to configure their intellectual property policies to promote innovation and economic growth, as well as public access to the fruits of intellectual labour, they would do themselves a huge favour by reading Lea Shaver's excellent book." Pam Samuelson, Professor Univeristy of California, Berkeley "This is essential reading for anyone who cares about one of the most important human rights issues of the century: access to knowledge." Madhavi Sunder, Professor of Law, University of California Davis This volume features four chapters addressing the current issues facing intellectual property, innovation and development policy in Brazil. Each chapter is authored by legal scholars affiliated to the Fundação Getulio Vargas law schools in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Each chapter examines a policy area that significantly impacts access to knowledge in Brazil. These include: exceptions and limitations to copyright, free software and open business models, patent reform and access to medicines, and open innovation in the biotechnology sector.

"Brazil is one of the world's most productive crucibles for new ideas and practices in innovation and collaboration. This meticulously researched book provides a sweeping tour of the issues arising form that leadership." Jonathan Zittrain - Professor, Harvard Law School "As policy makers around the world grapple with how to configure their intellectual property policies to promote innovation and economic growth, as well as public access to the fruits of intellectual labour, they would do themselves a huge favour by reading Lea Shaver's excellent book." Pam Samuelson, Professor Univeristy of California, Berkeley "This is essential reading for anyone who cares about one of the most important human rights issues of the century: access to knowledge." Madhavi Sunder, Professor of Law, University of California Davis This volume features four chapters addressing the current issues facing intellectual property, innovation and development policy in Brazil. Each chapter is authored by legal scholars affiliated to the Fundação Getulio Vargas law schools in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Each chapter examines a policy area that significantly impacts access to knowledge in Brazil. These include: exceptions and limitations to copyright, free software and open business models, patent reform and access to medicines, and open innovation in the biotechnology sector.

Access to knowledge is a demand for democratic participation, for global inclusion and for economic justice. It is a reaction to the excessively restrictive international IP regime put in place over the last two decades, which seeks to reassert the public interest in a more balanced information policy. With sponsorship from the Ford Foundation, the Information Society Project at Yale Law School has embarked on a new series of access to knowledge research, in partnership with colleagues in Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Russia and South Africa. The first book in this series, Access to Knowledge in Brazil, focuses on current issues in intellectual property, innovation and development policy from a Brazilian perspective. Each chapter is authored by scholars from the Fundação Getulio Vargas law schools in São Paolo and Rio de Janeiro and examines a policy area that significantly impacts access to knowledge in the country. These include: exceptions and limitations to copyright, free software and open business models, patent reform and access to medicines, and open innovation in the biotechnology sector.

This book is a must for librarians with international interest in access to knowledge. It includes a collection of 15 chapters written by authors from all over the world and covers different approaches to the vital role of libraries driving access to knowledge. There are chapters that offer solutions and ideas to enable libraries to become the knowledge engine in society. Other chapters discuss the conceptual part of the subject and related services. The book was compiled as part of the presidential theme of Ellen Tise, IFLA President 2009-2011, with the aim of offering the reader a good portrait of the opportunities and challenges that libraries have in driving access to knowledge.

A movement emerges to challenge the tightening of intellectual property law around the world. At the end of the twentieth century, intellectual property rights collided with everyday life. Expansive copyright laws and digital rights management technologies sought to shut down new forms of copying and remixing made possible by the Internet. International laws expanding patent rights threatened the lives of millions of people around the world living with HIV/AIDS by limiting their access to cheap generic medicines. For decades, governments have tightened the grip of intellectual property law at the bidding of information industries; but recently, groups have emerged around the world to challenge this wave of enclosure with a new counter-politics of "access to knowledge" or "A2K." They include software programmers who took to the streets to defeat software patents in Europe, AIDS activists who forced multinational pharmaceutical companies to permit copies of their medicines to be sold in poor countries, subsistence farmers defending their rights to food security or access to agricultural biotechnology, and college students who created a new "free culture" movement to defend the digital commons. Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property maps this emerging field of activism as a series of historical moments, strategies, and concepts. It gathers some of the most important thinkers and advocates in the field to make the stakes and strategies at play in this new domain visible and the terms of intellectual property law intelligible in their political implications around the world. A Creative Commons edition of this work will be freely available online.

The Education in Brazil: An International Perspective report was developed drawing on internationally comparative data on education in Brazil, in particular the extensive range of data collected by the OECD through its surveys. The experiences of other countries and how they have tackled challenges similar to those now faced by Brazil, along with the insights from consultations with key national experts, also inform the analysis.

This book looks at Brazil’s recent experience in using knowledge for development. It examines the major barriers confronting the country in its transition towards a knowledge-based economy, and presents elements of a viable strategy.