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The eleventh round of negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) took place in Melbourne, Australia from 1-9 March 2012. Stakeholders were given the opportunity to present at the stakeholder platform on 4 March, attend a reception on 6 March and the stakeholder briefing on 7 March.
The following WTO airgram WTO/AIR/3892/REV.1 contains the agenda for the upcoming WTO Council for TRIPS meeting to be held in Geneva from Tuesday, 28 February 2012 to Wednesday, 29 February 2012. Paragraph 2 and agenda items D, E, F, J, M and N will be of interest to readers. It should be noted that in the original document, the text is capitalized.
The Dominican Republic made a written request to the WTO secretariat that an additional agenda item be added (“M) on “Australia: Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill 2011 and its compatibility with the TRIPS Agreement”.
In a meeting with USTR on February 15, 2012, KEI, MSF, Oxfam and Public Citizen pressed USTR to release the negotiating text for the intellectual property rights chapter in the TPPA trade agreement negotiation. USTR said the negotiation had “unprecedented” transparency, but maintained the text needed to be secret from the general public. USTR also claimed than no one on its many advisory boards, who are cleared to see the negotiating text, were lobbyists.
On June 11, 2011, KEI published KEI Policy Brief 2011:1, which was titled: “White House and European Commission trade official oppose waiver of drug patents for Least Developed Countries (LDCs).”
The United States, on behalf of Group B (which includes Western European countries, Norway, the United States, Switzerland, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Turkey, Israel and the Holy See) presented the following statement opposing the adoption of the African Group/Development Agenda Group on patents and health (in its current forum). In its individual intervention, the Holy See supported the African Group/Development Agenda Group proposal.
The following WTO airgram WTO/AIR/3815/REV.1 contains the agenda for the upcoming WTO Council for TRIPS meeting to be held in Geneva from Monday, 24 October 2011 to Tuesday, 25 October 2011. Paragraph 3 and agenda items G, N and O will be of interest to readers of this blog. It should be noted that in the original document, the text is capitalized. Item G covers Review under Paragraph 8 of the Decision on the implementation of Paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health. Continue Reading
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
USTR has released its new White Paper on Access to Medicine. Here is the press release. A copy of the White Paper is available here:
As KEI has discussed previously, USTR’s proposal for the IP chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) raises numerous concerns for human rights, access to medicines, and access to information, among other issues. Continue Reading
Among the cables recently published by Wilileaks is one written on November 24, 2009, detailing negotiations between USTR and Anand Sharma, the Cabinet Minister for Commerce and Industry of the Government of India. The complete cable is available here: http://wikileaks.org/cable/2009/11/09NEWDELHI2375.html