Brussels, 04/10/2010 (Agence Europe) - Representatives from 37 countries participating in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) - Australia, Canada, South Korea, the US, Japan, Morocco, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the 27 Member States of the EU - reached an in-principle agreement at the end of the 11th round of negotiations on Saturday 2 October in Tokyo. This is a very controversial agreement because ACTA aims to protect intellectual property from the usual kinds of counterfeiting (clothing and medicines), and also digital counterfeiting (illegal downloading) on the basis of harmonised international standards.
In a joint statement published by the European Commission, which negotiated on behalf of the EU and its member states, the stakeholder ACTA countries indicate that the agreement includes provisions on the application of intellectual property rights, including provisions on civil, criminal and border enforcement measures (civil enforcement and criminal enforcement), cooperation mechanisms among ACTA parties to assist in their enforcement efforts and exchange of best practice for effective enforcement of intellectual property.
The press release explains that “participants in the negotiations constructively resolved nearly all substantive issues… and "agreed to work expeditiously to resolve the small number of outstanding issues that require further examination in capitals, with a view to finalising the text of the agreement as promptly as possible” but did not mention what the divergences might be. No date of the publication of the agreement text was announced either.
Issues still outstanding appear to involve the European request to include in the agreement, protection of geographical indications, as well as registration of designated origin in the same category as copyrights and trademarks. On Saturday, a European negotiator told pres: “We have covered a lot of ground but we still need to agree on a few pending issues, without which there would be no agreement”. At the end of the round in August in Washington, Commissioner for Trade Karel De Gucht warned that the EU would revise its position if the agreement did not introduce further value, including the protection of geographical indications.
European Parliament on its guard
The authors of a written agreement from the European Parliament, which is non-binding but very hostile to the ACTA, officially adopted last September (EUROPE 10211), Françoise Castex (S&D, France), Stavros Lambrinidis (S&D, Greece), Alexander Alvaro (ALDE, Germany) and Zuzana Roithova (EPP, Czech Republic) immediately responded to the announcement of the agreement and called on the Commission to publish the text of the agreement as soon as possible. In a joint press release they emphasised that Parliament should “ultimately decide on rejecting or accepting the agreement and a complete and thorough briefing of its members is now more urgent than ever. Accordingly, we are also calling on the Council and Commission not to proceed to any temporary application of the agreement before the European Parliament has been given the chance to express its consent on this issue”.
Sandrine Bélier and Yannick Jadot (Greens, France) called for, “the swift mobilisation of all democrats, delegates, associations, citizens and the media, irrespective of political differences, to defeat this antidemocratic initiative and put pressure on their governments and delegates to not ratify this text”. They explained that this text “could have a dramatic impact on access to knowledge and generic medicines, respect for public and digital freedoms, the presumption of innocence and also on live patents”. (E.H./transl.fl)