Arcadia Fund to Promote International Right to Research in Copyright Law

American University Washington College of Law (AUWCL) has received a three-year grant of $3.8 million from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, for its Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP). The project will study changes needed in international copyright policy to ensure equity in the production of and access to research.

In this year 2021, Fundación Vía Libre joined the coalition to promote access to knowledge in Latin America. Coordinated regionally by Fundación Karisma, the project will conduct research and advocacy on key aspects of copyright in Latin America.

This project will produce high impact research, provide training to a global network of change makers, and connect a world-wide network of experts to a global community of researchers, libraries, museums, archives and digital rights activists currently active in international copyright policy making.

The project’s key objectives are to:

  • Organize national and regional networks of researchers and the institutions that serve them to become influential participants in public debates about copyright reform at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and domestically;
  • Produce innovative empirical and normative research that defines the parameters, fundamental human rights basis for, and social and economic impact of rights to research in intellectual property laws;
  • Create, through the collaboration of academic and civil society networks, a set of positive policy proposals and supporting research and documentation, including specific proposals on international rights to preservation and to the cross border sharing of research materials.