Following critical calls for increased academic and fiscal accountability over the substance of one of its industry reports, The Conference Board of Canada has recalled three such documents:
Intellectual Property Rights in the Digital Economy; National Innovation Performance and Intellectual Property Rights: A Comparative Analysis; and Intellectual Property Rights—Creating Value and Stimulating Investment.
An internal review has determined that these reports did not follow the high quality research standards of The Conference Board of Canada, the organization stated.
Dr. Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Research Chair title, said there are “factual errors contained in the report” and he called for a government review of any public monies used to fund the report.
The Conference Board had already responded to Geist, saying he “charged the Conference Board with publishing a deceptive, plagiarized report. “
The Conference Board stated at the time, just days ago, that it “stands behind the findings of its report,” adding:
”While Mr. Geist charges the Board with lack of attribution in several instances, in fact, only one citation is missing. We have corrected the missing citation in the report and we apologize for the oversight. All other instances, referred to in the blog, include sources. We also acknowledge that some of the cited paragraphs closely approximate the wording of a source document.
Geist continued to cite factual errors contained within the report on his blog, noting “[f]or example, the Conference Board claimed that the OECD concluded that Canada is the world's file sharing capital on a per capita basis. This is simply false as anyone who reads the OECD report will find that it did not reach that conclusion.”
Meanwhile, one of the researchers involved with the report project released his own research report as a working paper with independent policy recommendations.
Jeremy deBeer, Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Law, was commissioned to provide a research report for the Conference Board last year on the issues of IP and innovation in the digital economy.
His document is available on line, at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1410158
deBeer’s report differs in many respects from the Conference Board’s document; for example, it calls for a “middle-ground” approach to regulation with a “notice-and-notice” system to used to inform customers of alleged infringement.
For more coverage, see
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/blogsection/0/126/
http://www.conferenceboard.ca/press/speech_oped/ipr.aspx
http://www.mediacastermagazine.com/issues/ISarticle.asp?aid=1000327102