Given the significant division in U.S. domestic economic interests over ACTA’s provisions and the lack of solid theoretical or empirical evidence supporting claims made by proponents of the agreement, it is puzzling that ACTA has commanded the support of the U.S. executive, even across two administrations from opposing political parties.

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PIJIP has launched a blog series for specific public interest suggestions for amending the latest (August 25) version of the ACTA text. We are inviting contributions from interested parties. We will post at least one blog every day with a suggested specific amendment to ACTA and an accompanying short justification.

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By requiring the judicial authorities to consider "any legitimate measure of value submitted by the right holder," including specifically "the suggested retail price," this Article in ACTA would be contrary to national statutes that provide for different standards, such as limits on damages to reasonable royalties.

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Kickoff event for the Intellectual Property Program. This is your opportunity to learn about the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, IP Law Society, IP Brief, and IP Clinic. Come meet the IP faculty, staff and student leadership.

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As currently drafted, ACTA does not require the merits of the alleged violations to be investigated and verified before measures may be implemented and enforced. The provision merely states that procedures “shall be fair and equitable”. As a term of art, the phrase “fair and equitable” only sets aspirational goals and principles and does not set concrete rights and obligations of the parties involved.

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The scope of the agreement is yet to be determined under Art. 2.X.5. To maintain a uniform and equitable scope of protection throughout the agreement, this section must be limited to counterfeit trademark goods and pirated copyright goods and not extend to “any act of infringement of intellectual property rights”. It is important to cross out “remedies which constitute a deterrent to further infringements” in order avoid abuse of remedies as a punitive measure.

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The current ACTA text shows inadequate concern for the due process rights of those alleged to be in contravention of counterfeiting or copyright piracy laws. These provisions are modeled on the due process provisions of 19 U.S.C. Sec. 1337, which U.S. border officials use to authorize the seizure of goods suspected of being counterfeit.

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In the current draft, the United States, NZ and Australia are moving to the TRIPS norms, which allow the flexibility to use limits on remedies for infringement to create liability rules in some areas. This is quite encouraging. There is zero evidence that statutory exceptions on injunctions or damages have contributed to counterfeiting, and many countries have some types of exception in their national laws...

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The scope of this ACTA should be limited to enforcement measures in cases of willful trademark counterfeiting and copyright piracy on a commercial scale. The EU/Switzerland proposal still assumes a default position that ACTA's border measures will apply to all classes of intellectual property, including patents, geographic indications, and all classes of trademark and copyright infringement -- not only willful counterfeiting and piracy.

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This paper compares the institutional and procedural arrangements that a range of global institutions make for civil society representation and input into policy development processes on intellectual property issues. The context for this analysis comes from two sets of norms for multi-stakeholder public policy development that exist in other regimes of governance: those of the Aarhus Convention, and those of the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society.

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