Brussels, 16/11/2010 (Agence Europe) - A month and a half after their agreement in principle at the 11th round of negotiations in Tokyo at the start of October (see EUROPE 10228), the 37 participant countries in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) concluded their discussions on Monday 15 November after resolving their differences over a handful of remaining matters. ACTA, which now begins the long national approval process, will face its first major test next week in the European Parliament (EP).
Negotiated outside the WTO by Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland, the United States and the 27 member states of the European Union, ACTA seeks to protect intellectual property from both traditional counterfeiting (in clothing, medicines, etc) and digital counterfeiting (illegal downloading), on the basis of harmonised international standards.
As a European Commission press release published on Monday notes, ACTA includes state of the art provisions on the enforcement of intellectual property rights, including provisions in civil, criminal, border and digital environment enforcement measures, robust cooperation mechanisms among ACTA parties to assist in their enforcement efforts, and establishment of best practices for effective intellectual property rights enforcement.
Among the issues pending was the protection by ACTA of geographical indications, which the EU wanted and which it viewed as being identical to copyrights and trade marks. According to an EU source, the new text places geographical indications, copyright and trade marks all on an equal footing. The revised text will also give signatory countries discretion on whether to make camcording (illegally recording films in cinemas) a criminal offence. The EU, which opposed criminal sanctions for such activities, managed to get those countries which criminalise camcording to agree that it cannot be punishable by imprisonment.
In a joint statement, the ACTA parties promise to publish the revised version of the text very shortly, indicating that it still has to undergo final legal review before being put to the various authorities for the various authorisation processes, including consultation, prior to being signed. The process for all 37 signatories could take until the end of 2011.
In the United States, the Obama administration is planning a public consultation before a formal decision is taken. There is no doubt that the US Congress will want to have its say on the final text. In the EU, ACTA is likely to be passed by Parliament, though over the last two years the EP has shown itself to be hostile to a multilateral agreement to which China, from where most of the world's counterfeit goods emanate, is not a signatory. The EP, which is also sceptical over whether the agreement complies with fundamental rights, formally adopted a highly critical statement on ACTA in September (see EUROPE 12011). Chief EU negotiator, Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht, will face the first test next week in Strasbourg at the plenary session of the EP at which it is intended to adopt a resolution on this most controversial of texts. (E.H./transl.rt)