Comments on the Marrakesh Treaty Considering South African Copyright Law and Policy

• Date: 16 August 2019
• Pages: 66-73
• Published date: 16 August 2019
• Citation: (2014) IPLJ 66
• Author: Bram van Wiele

COMMENTS ON THE MARRAKESH

TREATY CONSIDERING SOUTH

AFRICAN COPYRIGHT LAW AND

POLICY



Research Stude nt, Intellectual Property Unit , University of Cape Town

  

On 27 June 2013 the Diplomatic Conference of the World Intellectual

Property O rganization (WI PO) adopted the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitat e

Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind , Visually Impaired, or

Otherwise P rint Disabled (Marr akesh Treaty).1 The purpose of the Treaty is

to make books and other published m aterials accessible to visual ly impaired

persons (VI Ps) in order to end to the ‘Book Famine’ – the limited percentage

of published works accessible for VIPs. The following day 51 countries signed

the Treaty. Among those signatories were a majority of Af rican and Latin

American count ries. Regrettably, South Africa was not a mong them. The

Treaty has been widely welcomed and is a great ste p in facilitating acces s

to copyright works for VIPs ar ound the world. It can also be seen as a great

success for WIPO becaus e of the large number of countries that signe d

the Treaty immediately upon ad option. The Treaty will take effect upon

  

According to an estim ation by the World Health Organization (WHO) in

2013, of the 285 million VIPs in the world, approxi mately 90 per cent live in

low-income countries.2 In South A frica it is estimated th at 880 000 persons

   3 T he large amount of VIPs



ensure their acc essibility to copyright works. It should also be noted t hat this

issue has an impor tant developmental dimension since a severe shor tage of

accessible format books, newspape rs, magazines and the li ke aggravates the

social and economic problems faced by V IPs in developing countries.

* LLB (Universit y of Antwerp, Belg ium) LLM (Universit y of Antwerp, Belg ium) LLM (Universit y

of Cape Town).

1 Mar rakesh Treaty to Facilit ate Access to Publishe d Works for Persons Who Are Bli nd, Visually

Impaired , or Otherwise P rint Disabled, J une 2013, available at http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/

diplconf/en/vip_dc/vip_ dc_8_rev.pdf (viewed on 7 Septe mber 2014).

2 World Health Organization , Fact Sheet N°282, available at ht tp://www.who.int/mediacentre/

factsheets/fs282/en (viewed on 7 Septe mber 2014).

3 Statistics So uth African ‘Cen sus 2011’, avai lable at http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/

P03014/P0 30142011.pdf (viewed on 7 Se ptember 2014).

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(2014) IPLJ 66

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