On Wednesday 25 April 2018, 169 scholars voiced their concerns over the proposed press publishers right (in Article 11 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market), which is currently at a critical stage in the EU legislative process (with a COREPER meeting in Council on 27 April and a final JURI meeting in June). Four of the signatories to the letter are from CIPIL: Professor Lionel Bently, Dr Henning Grosse Ruse-Khan, Dr Christina Angelopoulos and Dr Kryzstof Garstka. Professor Bently has a long standing interest in attempts to protect news by copyright and between 2014 and 2016 was co-PI (with Professor Ian Hargreaves) of an AHRC-funded project on copyright and news in the digital environment. For more details, in particular the outputs of our postdoctoral researcher, Dr Richard Danbury, see here. The letter and all 169 signatories can be found here. Professor Bently has forwarded the letter to the UK Minister for IP, Sam Gyimah, calling on the UK to reconsider its position (supporting the proposed right) in the Council Working Party.
