The new text of the ACTA agreement, showing changes following the Washington D.C. round of negotiations in August, has now leaked. The most notable change may be the elimination of the old sections 2 and 3 from digital chapter. That change removes the explicit secondary liability plus safe harbor system for ISPs. There is some debate about whether the change will in fact remove internet service liability from ACTA's implementation.

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According to Inside U.S. Trade (August 27, 2010), the U.S. has adopted "a major policy shift" and "proposed removing controversial language from the Anticounterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) that would have required signatories to impose secondary liability on Internet firms for intellectual property rights infringements by individuals." On closer read of the ACTA text as we know it, the truth may be that secondary liability is not going away at all.

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One of the frequent complaints about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and other elements of the enforcement agenda is that it is not based on evidence. This issue becomes a legal one in the implementation of the Special 301 program, which requires that USTR base its list on empirical judgments about what practices most affect U.S. commerce. But what if counterfeiting actually helps U.S. consumers and even the brands they copy? According to a new EU funded report, that may be just the case.

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The Indian Department of Industry Policy and Promotion (DIPP) is seeking comments regarding the compulsory licensing of pharmaceuticals. In a recently published discussion paper, DIPP describes a changing domestic market which is trending towards greater concentration of ownership and more ownership by multinationals. As the industry changes, it is producing more medicines for export, yet domestic sales are declining and there remains a substantial need for greater access to medicines. Comments are due on September 30.

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Inside U.S. Trade reports that the U.S. has adopted "a major policy shift" and "proposed removing controversial language from the Anticounterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) that would have required signatories to impose secondary liability on Internet firms for intellectual property rights infringements by individuals."

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According to an analysis by Knowledge Ecology International of FDA approved new molecular entities over the past 6 years, the research and development divide for so-called neglected diseases is still starkly apparent. Neglected diseases refer to conditions that primarily affect poor populations in poor countries, which account for a very high percentage of the world's avoidable deaths, but attract little R&D funding.

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The 2010 workshop of the International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP) will take place September 24-26 at American University Washington College of Law. The agenda and registration information is now available. ISHTIP promotes and supports scholarly investigation of the national histories of patent, copyright, and “related” rights; the diverse “roads not taken” in the evolution of these legal structures; contemporary countertrends; and the laws and norms that have been devised in non European cultures around the world to manage intellectual production and exchange.

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PIJIP's Enforcement Project is accepting paper submissions for an online and published working paper series on the International Intellectual Property Enforcement Agenda. Paper submissions are due by August 26 through an online form.

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Yesterday's lunch with ACTA negotiators was set up in a way that surprised all who attended. There were no presentations, Q&A, or structured conversations. Instead, the room had a bunch of small tables that seated 5 or 6 people each, and everyone walked around and mingled. I spoke with negotiators from Korea, Australia, the EU and the US about the negotiations so far, and about ACTA's effect on access to medicines.

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As ACTA negotiators prepare to meet in D.C. next week, new analysis shows that little progress has been made on most of the public interest concerns highlighted by hundreds of intellectual property experts and organizations in June. In their last statement accompanying their refusal to release text following the Lucerne negotiation, the negotiators repeated their claims from their April press release that ACTA would not harm major public interests. Public interest groups' refutation of these claims appear as applicable now as they were in June.

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