Confirmation that Obama Administration was “lone hold out” for releasing bracketed ACTA text to the public in Summer of 2010.

On July 1, 2010, William Yue, the Senior Counsel, Office of the Chief Counsel for International Commerce at the US Department of Commerce, wrote to Joel Blank and John Cobau about the ACTA negotiations. John Cobau was the Chief Counsel for International Commerce at the U.S. Department of Commerce, and Joel Blank was International Attorney-Advisor at US Department of Commerce.

A redacted version of this email was the only document released to KEI as part of a larger FOIA request concerning the Department of Commerce role in the ACTA negotiations. A copy is available here:
/wp-content/uploads/lone_holdout.pdf

The Obama Administration has blanked out 2 of the 3 paragraphs in the July 1, 2010 email. The unredacted paragraph is informative, however. What Yue confirms is that the United States was the “lone hold out” for releasing the ACTA text at the 9th round of negotiations at Lucerne, Switzerland.

From: Yue, William
Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2010 7:26 PM
To: Cobau, John; Blank, Joel
Subject: ACTA

The first two paragraphs are completely redacted.

The third paragraph reads as follows:

The other disagreement was over releasing the bracketed text. We were the lone hold out; Kira said we would agree to release only an unbracketed (ie, agreed text). The Euros and some others push hard for release, but since it required consensus the text will not be released. We spent the final 3 hours arguing over all of this.

Bill,
William C. Yue
wyue@doc.gov
202-482-3623
202-462-4076 (fax)

Later the Department of Commerce would give William Yue a “Distinguish Service Award” for “his contributions to the negotiations of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.”

2010 Distinguished Service Award

Submitted on December 22, 2010 – 8:17pm

William Yue, Senior Counsel, Office of the Chief Counsel for International Commerce. Mr. Yue was recognized for his contributions to the negotiations of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which establishes a state-of-the-art international framework for effectively combating global proliferation of commercial-scale counterfeiting and piracy.