Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a global effort to improve and create international standards for the enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights laws against large scale IP Rights (IPR) infringements. The primary components of ACTA include (1) international cooperation (2) enforcement practices and (3)legal framework to enforce IPR. On October 1, 2011, United States, Australia, Canada, Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Morocco, and Singapore signed ACTA during a ceremony in Tokyo, Japan. On January 26, 2012, the members of the EU signed the agreement despite street protests in France and Poland and international oppositions.

Background

In 2006, Japan and the United States introduced the idea of a new plurilateral treaty to combat counterfeiting and piracy which was called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) to bring together interested all governments worldwide that are willing to cooperate to improve the international standards to enforce the protection of Intellectual Property Rights. The European Union was mandated to lead the negotiation which started on June 2008. Any member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) supporting ACTA will be able to sign the agreement until May 2013. The ACTA participants conducted series of negotiations discussing the content of the agreement. On April 16, 2010, a unanimous agreement was developed after the 8th round of egotiation which was held in Wellington, New Zealand. The text of the negotiated ACTA was reviewed by legal experts of each negotiating countries on December 2010 which was held in Sysdney Australia. On November 15, 2010, the negotiating parties announced that they were able to finalized the content of ACTA. The final text of the agreement is available here

Structure

ACTA is built under the structure of existing international rules on Intellectual Property particularly the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement, a comprehensive multilateral agreement established to protect all forms of intellectual property rights in 1995. The legal framework in enforcing IPR protection under the agreements respects civil liberties and the rights of consumers and it has provisions on border measures, civil and criminal enforcement as well as Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement in the Digital Environment.

Supporters

The supporters of ACTA recognize the importance of an international treaty in protecting intellectual property rights and they will be able to regain their lost revenues if counterfeit and pirated goods will be stopped. Supporters of ACTA are major brand owners, copyright holders, movie studios, pharmaceutical companies which include:

• Copyright Alliance
• Emergency Committee for American Trade
• International Intellectual Property Alliance
• International Trademark Association
• Motion Picture Association of America
• National Association of Manufacturers
• Recording Industry Association of America
• Software & Information Industry Association
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce
• United States Council for International Business
• U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas)
• Glaxo Smith Kline
• Pfizer
• Sanofi-Aventis
• Monsanto Company
• Time Warner
• Sony
• Verizon
• The Walt Disney Company,
• News Corporation
• Viacom

Oppositions

ACTA also receives criticisms and oppositions from different sectors particularly companies within the internet industry, digital rights groups such asElectronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, the Pirate Party, Reporters Without Borders, Oxfam, Sakharov Laureates, Hactivist Group Anynymous and Members of the European Parliament and EU parliamentary Rapporteur for ACTA, Kader Arif.

Critics of ACTA argue that the treaty is undemocratic. According to EFF, ACTA was "negotiated in secret and it bypassed checks and balances of existing international IP norm-setting bodies, without any meaningful input from national parliaments, policymakers, or their citizens." In addition, EFF said that the worst part of the treaty is the creation of an "ACTA Committee" which will serve as a new global institution with a mandate to implement the treaty without legal obligation to be transparent in its proceedings. EFF pointed out that ACT is undemocratic in substance and in process.

Harvard Law School Professors and US Constitution Scholars Jack Goldsmith and Lawrence Lessig said that the President Barack Obama's decision to sign ACTA without submitting the final text of the treaty to the Senate or to the Congress for approval is unconstitutional. According to them, "The president has no independent constitutional authority over intellectual property or communications policy, and there is no long historical practice of making sole executive agreements in this area. To the contrary, the Constitution gives primary authority over these matters to Congress, which is charged with making laws that regulate foreign commerce and intellectual property."

Electronic Frontier Foundation