PIJIP Assumes Stewardship of the Open COVID Pledge
April, 2021
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The Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University Washington College of Law is pleased to announce that effective April 20, 2021, it has assumed stewardship of the Open COVID Pledge (opencovidpledge.org). The Open COVID Pledge was conceived by a volunteer steering committee in March 2020 and launched on April 7, 2020. Since then, an estimated 500,000 patents and multiple copyrights have been publicly pledged to the COVID-19 response. The Open COVID Pledge was hosted and stewarded by Creative Commons during its first year of operation.
The Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property is a public Interest intellectual property program at the American University Washington College of Law. Initiated by Senior Policy Fellow Jorge Contreras in 2013, PIJIP also hosts an ongoing project on patent pledges, including a public database of pledges. In addition to Contreras, the Open COVID Pledge steering committee is co-chaired by Diane Peters, Senior Policy Fellow at PIJIP and a co-founder of the Pledge, and Meredith Jacob, PIJIP’s Assistant Director for Academic Programs.