Copyright related issues are important for developing nations as they want to be active participants in the knowledge- based global economy; hence they need to understand how the digital revolution impacts upon them and determine appropriate legal regimes.
The presentation will discuss the latest amendments that were made to bring the Jordanian Copyright Law up-to-date with the digital revolution. Jordan has been a WTO member since April 11, 2000 and as a result had to join international copyright treaties (WCT and WPPT) and to introduce new amendments to its Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) regime including its copyright law.
Jordan also became the third country and the first Arab state from the Middle East to sign the Jordan- United States Free Trade Agreement (JUSFTA) that went into force in December 17, 2001 requiring the country to do further amendments to its laws. I will give an overview of the Jordanian intellectual property laws and concentrate mainly on the Jordanian Copyright Law No 22 for 1999 as amended.
I will examine the influence of the JUSFTA particularly article 4 (intellectual property) on the development of the Jordanian Copyright Law in connection with the digital revolution. I argue that the latest amendments brought to the Jordanian Copyright Law as a result of the JUSFTA were more restricted than WCT and WPPT, and hence the Jordanian Copyright Law may not serve as a good model for other developing nations that are aspiring to update their copyright laws. I will discuss another appropriate kind of copyright model.
The full presentation is available here.
