The Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property of the House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee in the US is scheduled to hold a hearing on September 11. According to media reports, the move is seen to be a legislative attempt to redress publishers' concerns that public access policies - the recently enacted policy at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) - conflict with copyright and intellectual property laws. No text has yet been released for the legislation, tentatively titled the 'Fair Copyright in Research Works Act.' Also, the hearing has not appeared on the subcommittee's schedule.
The legislative hearing follows the success of publishers in adding a key phrase to the NIH public access mandate just before the bill's passage in December 2007. The added clause calls for the NIH policy to be implemented 'in a manner consistent with copyright law.' In recent months, the possibility of a legal or legislative challenge began to seem almost certain. In comments to the NIH on implementation this spring, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) included a legal memo backing publisher claims that the NIH policy conflicts with copyright law. In June, NIH director Elias Zerhouni denied publishers' request that the policy go through a federal rulemaking process.
Shortly after passage of the NIH public access policy, AAP's VP for legal and government affairs Allan Adler reiterated the publishers' position that the measure was 'unprecedented' and 'inconsistent' with intellectual property laws. It was vowed that publishers would continue opposition. Anticipating such a challenge, officials at SPARC and the Association of Research Libraries, however, have strongly denied that the NIH public access policy conflicts with copyright. Last year, they prepared a memo of their own in this regard.
