The Marrakesh Treaty, Wipo Accessible Books Consortium, Public–Private Partnerships, and Access to Copyrighted Works by Visually Impaired Persons

Abstract

The Accessible Books Format (ABC) partnership provides some models for technical assistance and capacity building both in publishing and use of accessible formats. Concerning the latter, through it’s Starter Kit, the ABC draws attention to some of the challenges to the use of these accessible formats, which will not be solved by the legal platform of Marrakesh Treaty or other legal means, but rather by policy initatives and the intentional collaboration of publishers of accessible formats with other stakeholders. However, the TIGAR model of individual licensing contracts limits the availability of those books to the very few institutions participating in the TIGAR, without transparency as to pricing. This is a significant institutional limitation to wide dissemination of information and learning material.

Keywords: Marrakesh Treaty, WIPO, Accessible Books Consortium, Public Private Partnership, Intellectual Property Governance

JEL Classification: I125