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Whole World wins an out of court settlement against the University of Barcelona

Press Release - July 2003

The Whole World Company has won an out of court settlement against the University of Barcelona for serious copyright infringement with the PhraseBook for Writing Papers and Research

In July 2001, University of Barcelona Library staff purchased and downloaded a Single User Licence version of the PhraseBook from the Whole World website, and subsequently made the PhraseBook available to over 80,000 students and staff from the home page and several other pages of the University of Barcelona Library website.

The out of court settlement was negotiated on behalf of Whole World by the the Information Technologies Department of Landwell-PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Barcelona. Landwell, who also act on behalf of the Business Software Alliance, are one of Spain's leading IP law firms.

EU pays only lip service to eEurope

In the course of pursuing the case, Whole World wrote to the EU Commission for Enterprise and the Information Society in Brussels. However, the EU were uninterested in our concerns, in spite of comments by the Commissioner that 'Europe is now on the right tracks to rapidly become an "eEurope".'

As a publisher, Whole World are concerned that disregard for copyright law and intellectual property rights may have a negative impact on electronic publishing and the development of the Information Society in Europe. For authors and publishers, creating a new book requires a great deal of time and investment. Without support from the European Commission and respect for intellectual property law by major European institutions, the risk of copyright infringement threatens innovation and investment, and the development of digital educational publishing and distribution.

The Internet has great potential for education, providing access to materials for universities, researchers and students in all parts of the world. For some types of book, such as the PhraseBook for Writing Papers and Research, the digital format has distinct advantages. Not only does it help non-native speaking researchers publish in English, but it also furthers understanding by English-speaking academics of research conducted in other parts of the world.

However, the downside of this form of knowledge dissemination is that unscrupulous institutions can use the anonymity and remoteness of the Internet to avoid copyright law - the University of Barcelona purchased and downloaded their Single User Licence PhraseBook online by credit card without revealing their full identity. Unlike Napster and the major record companies, cases such as ours show that the reverse can also be the case - the intellectual property rights of a publisher and authors exploited by a major European educational institution.

Without support and protection from the European Union bodies responsible for 'e-Europe', the EU has a long way to go before it is 'the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world'. Development of 'eEurope' is not only about protecting consumers' rights: publishers too require EU support if the European Union is to really achieve its declared aims of 'eLearning', 'goDigital' and 'eContent' for the production and dissemination of European digital content.

Relevant links

European Commission Information Society: http://europa.eu.int/information_society/index_en.htm

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PhraseBook for Writing Papers and Research in English
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