Archives: Activities

The University of Amsterdam's Research Priority Area Personalised Communication, a joint initiative between the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) and the Institute for Information Law (IViR), is looking for PhD candidates: 

• 3 PhD candidates in Communication Science and Information Law

The Institute for Information Law is also looking for a PhD researcher in law and a Postdoc researcher in Communication Science/Journalism/Media Studies for a European ERC project Profiling and targeting news readers – implications for the democratic role of the digital media, user rights and public information policy:

• PhD vacancy.
• Postdoc vacancy.

Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius, reseacher at IViR, discussed his research, in Dutch, during a 1 hour special of the Amsterdam radio show 'Radio Swammerdam'. The topic of the show is privacy on the internet: 'Heb je (n)iets te verbergen?' ['Nothing to hide?'].

Geert Lovink was a guest on the show too.

The show can be listened as a podcast here:

• https://soundcloud.com/swammerdam/heb-je-nog-iets-te-verbergen
• https://itunes.apple.com/nl/podcast/radio-swammerdam/id1050086766?l=en&mt=2

19 December 2015, 11:00 – 16:30
Chair: Bernt Hugenholtz
Agnietenkapel – Universiteit van Amsterdam
Oudezijds Voorburgwal 231, Amsterdam

Free entry, registration required (see below)
 

Over the last three decades the world has witnessed a dramatic growth in patents. For example, in the United States annual patent grants have risen from 66,000 in 1980 to well over 300,000 today. Similar trends, albeit a bit more modest, can be observed in Europe. And in countries with a shorter patent tradition, figures are telling the same, or an even more remarkable story. In China, for example, the number of grants has increased more than tenfold since 2000. 

This led the former President of the European Patent Office, Alison Brimelow, to liken the (alleged) overheating of the patent system to climate change. According to her the situation is ‘a bit like global warming: it is changing; you don’t know where it is going; you don’t know what the problems are.’

In this symposium we will turn our attention to one of the possible causes: the inventive step analysis. Might it be the case that the main gatekeeper of the patent fortress has gradually become less vigilant — perhaps even to such a degree that the whole patent empire may be put in danger? Or should we look elsewhere to find the causes of ‘global patent warming’ (if it exists at all)?

Six speakers will share with us their (varying) views on the subject:

• Theo Bodewig (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin) (t.b.c.);
• Sven Bostyn (University of Amsterdam / University of Liverpool);
• Rochelle Dreyfuss (New York University);
• Helen Gubby (Erasmus University);
• Gertjan Kuipers (De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek);
• Lodewijk Pessers (University of Amsterdam / De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek).

After the presentations all speakers will participate in a panel discussion. 

To register for the symposium, please send an e-mail to ivir@ivir.nl
 

Programme

11:00-11:10	Welcome Bernt Hugenholtz
11:10-11:40	The inventiveness requirement through history Lodewijk Pessers
11:50-12:20	Take out inventive step and we will have warming: does the solution lie in procedure rather than substance? Rochelle Dreyfuss
12:30-13:10	Pause/lunch
13:10-13:40	Some remarks on inventive activity and inventive step in Germany Theo Bodewig
13:50-14:20	Software patents and (lack of) inventive step; biotech patents and (lack of) inventive step: Is inventive step really the problem here? Sven Bostyn
14:30-15:00	The early years of the 'person skilled in the art' Helen Gubby
15:10-15:40	Inventive step and plausibility Gertjan Juipers
15:50-16:30	Panel discussion Lodewijk Pessers, Rochelle Dreyfuss, Theo Bodewig, Sven Bostyn, Helen Gubby, Gertjan Kuipers

 

Op dinsdag 8 december 2015 sprak Nico van Eijk in de Eerste Kamer tijdens een deskundigenbijeenkomst over de wijziging van de Mediawet voor het toekomstbestendigmaken van de publieke mediadienst.

• Zie hier de tekst van zijn bijdrage;
• Zie hier het wetsvoorstel bij de Eerste Kamer.
   

 

 

Frederik Borgesius, onderzoeker bij het IViR, heeft de Prix de thèse anglophone René Cassin 2015, uitgegeven door het Institut International des Droits de l'Homme, gewonnen voor zijn proefschrift getiteld 'Improving Privacy Protection in the Area of Behavourial Targeting'.

Van harte gefeliciteerd Frederik!

 

The Institute for Information Law is pleased to announce that a paper written by Lucie Guibault, Christian Handke and Joan-Josep Vallbé has been awarded with the LIBER Innovation Award. This award is given to the 3 most innovative and relevant papers submitted to the LIBER Conference, which will be held in London on the 24-26 of June 2015.

Is Europe falling behind in data mining? Copyright law's impact on data mining in academic research.

Abstract:
This paper discusses how different levels of copyright protection affect the text and data mining (TDM) performance of academic researchers in the main research areas.
Copyright protection is determined at the national level. The scope of rights and exceptions varies per country: in some countries, exceptions expressly allow TDM to take place, while in others such activities are restricted. In most countries, the law is unclear. Statutory copyright exceptions, where they exist, can be interpreted in different ways. The assessment on the lawfulness of TDM falls back on the judgment of the researcher. Depending on the knowledge or perception of the law, TDM may be deemed allowed, probably allowed, probably not allowed or restricted. This paper assesses the consequences of the different levels of copyright protection on TDM activities.

Our aim is to explain the comparative variation in research output about data mining. For this, we collected data from Thomson Reuter’s Web of Science. To identify the research output of interest, we extracted the number of all published research from authors residing in the 31 largest national economies that contained the expression “data mining” in the extended abstract, including 14 EU member states, for the years 1992 to 2014. To control for the total research output of the respective countries, our dependent variable is the quotient between this absolute academic TDM output and the total research output from these countries. Our unit of analysis is the country-year proportion of TDM research output.

Other control variables include the rule of law (as reported by the World Bank), dealing with the level of enforcement of copyright, and the size and wealth of countries.
To estimate the effect of copyright law on the share of TDM in total research output, we fit a multilevel linear regression model with varying intercept for country and year.

The data illustrate the rapid growth of TDM related articles in total research output across all countries. We find a highly significant effect of copyright law: the more restrictive copyright law in most European countries is associated with a significantly lower share of TDM output. Data mining makes up a higher share of total research output in countries with more permissive copyright laws. Especially some Asian countries overperform in terms of their TDM research output. What is more, the share of TDM in total research output grows more rapidly in the less restrictive countries.