Today USTR was pointing to four documents to explain the U.S. decision to sign the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. While it was not surprising that the United States signed the agreement, KEI was disappointed that the statements did not address the issue of the inconsistencies between US law and the ACTA, or make any commitments that the ACTA Committee would operate in an open, transparent and inclusive manner.
These are the USTR documents:
These were copied from David Hammerstein’s twitter feed, October 3, 2010.
http://twitter.com/#!/dahammerstein
Two areas where ACTA is inconsistent with US law, injunctions and damages
KEI Policy Brief, 2011:2
30 September 2011, revised 3 October 2011
James Love and Krista Cox
As the U.S. is reportedly about to sign ACTA, we wanted to point out two important areas where ACTA is not consistent with U.S. law. These are the sections of ACTA dealing with injunctions and damages. Below we have included the text from ACTA and the WTO TRIPS agreement on these two topics.
This was read today, September 30, 2011, at the WIPO GA
Agenda Item 33 (iii), the Advisory Committee on Enforcement
This was read today, September 30, 2011, at the WIPO GA
Agenda Item 33(i) Standing Committee on the Law of Patents
KEI agrees with the perceptive and constructive comments offered by South Africa on behalf of the Africa Group, and India, on behalf of the Development Agenda Group (DAG).
The 49th WIPO General Assembly began today, in a packed hall of the CICG convention center. The agenda and other documents for the meeting is available here. The Director General, Francis Gurry, began his talk focusing on financial challenges, and, among other things, several references to the work of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR). Gurry talked about progress on the AV treaty, and progress on an “instrument” for persons with disabilities. He talked about the new SCCR work program on the broadcast treaty. He did not mention the WIPO work on libraries, education or other copyright limitations and exceptions issues.
The meeting is webcast. Countries have been given 5 minutes for opening statements.
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In 2000, President Clinton asked Donna Shalala, then the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), to write to Representative Jan Schakowsky. Schakowky had asked President Clinton to provide the World Health Organization with royalty free rights to health care products, for which the United States holds rights.
Schakowsky was pressing President Clinton to share its rights, under 35 USC 202(c)(4) — a federal statute that reserves certain rights in patents where the federal government provided funding for the invention.
As the UN meets to discuss non-communicable diseases, one area of controversy is the effort by White House trade officials and the European Commissioner for Trade to block any mention in a Political Declaration of the November 14, 2001 WTO Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health.
This note explains why the Doha Declaration was important, and what USTR and DG-Trade are trying to do in the NCD resolution. I will start with a very quick history of the events that led to the 2001 WTO resolution.
Wikileaks has published several cables invovling Chile, a country that signed an FTA with the United States/ When the Chile/US FTA came into effect in 2004, it was the template for a series of subsequent Bush Administration FTA agreements that ramped up IPR protections for pharmacetuicals and copyrights, and it seemed aggressive at the time. Continue Reading