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On 10 July 2007, the EU Commission received a letter from a large group including some of Europe's biggest media groups and telecom companies urging for the rejection of an offer made by EU national royalty-collecting societies to settle an anti-trust case.

The Commission started examining a model contract for public performance rights between the collecting societies members of CISAC (the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers) as a result of a complaint made in 2003 by digital music distribution platform Music Choice Europe.

The complaint concerned the fact that the authors were obliged to transfer their rights only to their own national collecting society and that the

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The Swedish Justice Department initiated the public debate process on a new legislation that will allow the copyright holders to obtain the identity of people that share illegal content over in the Internet.

The draft says that the copyright holders can go to court asking the ISPs to reveal the names of the people allegedly violating intellectual property laws.

The Justice Department statement explained the purpose of the draft: "Thereby, it will become easier to intervene against illegal file-sharing, which in turn will stimulate the development of legal alternatives for distribution of, for example, film and music over the Internet."

Tobias Andersson, press spokesman for Piratbyrån, was critical of the new

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The summer special session of United Nation's World Intellectual Property Organization's (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related rights (SCCR) ended with an outcome that effectively killed the proposed treaty for protection of broadcast organisations (Broadcast Treaty). The committee called off the Diplomatic Conference that was supposed to take place in November to approve the treaty. Even if the treaty remains on the agenda of SCCR, it is unlikely that there will be any serious push to overcome the vastly different positions on key issues relating to objectives, scope and object of protection.

There were several reasons for this outcome. The treaty was unwanted by

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Centre for Educational Research and Innovation - Giving Knowledge for Free The Emergence of Open Educational Resources
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During 11-15 June 2007, the Provisional Committee on Proposals for a WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) Development Agenda (PCDA) had meetings during which WIPO members negotiated agreements on several proposals for new activities of the UN organization.

"This is a major achievement. It's a complete overhaul of the WIPO concept, broadening it to reflect society's growing concern with ownership of technologies and knowledge, and its effects for the future, both in developed and developing countries" was the statement of a participant in the meetings.

Six clusters of proposals, labelled A to F, were under discussion during the meeting on issues such as open collaborative projects, intellectual property

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On 26 May 2007 the Swiss version of Creative Commons licenses were launched in Zurich at a ceremony held as the finishing highlight of this year's Tweakfest, Switzerland's Festival for Media, Culture, and Digital Lifestyle.

The launch was hosted by Digitale Allmend, a Swiss NGO focused on access to digital information and creativity. Openlaw and Digitale Allmend are co-leading the Swiss Creative Commons project in a joint effort. With Switzerland, the Creative Commons licenses are now offered in localized versions in a total of 37 countries around the world.

John Buckman, Creative Commons board member and founder of magnatune.com, gave the keynote address, explaining how he developed his website as a

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The German non-profit organization "Netzwerk Freies Wissen" (Free Knowledge Network) heavily criticizes the goals of the conference held by the G8 states' ministers of justice starting on 23 May 2007.

The most important item on the agenda is a stronger enforcement of intellectual property. For this reason the Network, together with other organizations and private persons from many countries will present the "Civil Society declaration on the G8 summit 2007 and intellectual property rights".

"The goal of this declaration is to point out the severe problems in this area, which have grown throughout the world in the last years", says Petra Buhr, speaker for the network. "Furthermore we demand radical changes in the

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Financial Times obtained an executive summary of a new report produced by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that estimates the trade losses due to piracy and counterfeiting did not exceed 200 billion USD.

The report should be endorsed by the OECD board this month and is considered politically sensitive, taking into account that the estimates from the industry show figures up to 3-4 times higher than the OECD estimates based on reported customs seizures in various countries.

The efforts of the international business lobbists, that have pushed for Germany to put the fight against counterfeiting on the next G8 summit agenda, could be undermined by this new report. This is why the