Medical Device Classes Included In Newly-Released DMCA Exemptions

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it illegal to circumvent technological measures used to prevent unauthorized access to copyrighted works.  Certain activities and classes of works, however, are exempted from this prohibition.  The exempted classes of works are determined by the U.S. Copyright Office every three years and remain in effect for the ensuing three-year period. 

The latest set of exempted classes was released last week.  While many of the 2015 exemptions are similar to those in the 2012 list, there are two additions that will be particularly noteworthy for medical device companies.

The first provides an exemption, in limited circumstances, for accessing patient data in a networked medical device system: