This study, sponsored by the Open Society Institute (OSI), reflects contributions from leading copyright and IP experts, who participated at a workshop sponsored by the OSI and held at the Cardozo School of Law in New York in December, 2007. The task of developing a global approach to limitations and exceptions (“L&E’s”) is one of the major challenges facing the international copyright system today. As mechanisms of access, L&E’s contribute to the dissemination of knowledge, which in turn is essential for a variety of human activities and values, including liberty, the exercise of political power, and economic, social and personal advancement. Part I analyses the structure of limitations and exceptions under the Berne Convention and sketches the rationale for a multilateral approach to the question of limitations and exceptions. Part II explores flexibilities inside the international copyright acquis, review the three-step test and assess its import for the validity of a proposed international instrument on L&E’s, particularly given the expansion of the test in the TRIPS Agreement and the interpretive jurisprudence of the WTO dispute panels.
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