India Concerned How ACTA Changes Previous Trade Agreements

Politics

from the protests-getting-heard dept

We’ve pointed out in the past, that one of the reasons why ACTA was done outside of the existing infrastructure for such agreements set up under WIPO and the WTO was to craft an agreement without involving the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). The negotiators knew, quite well, that the BRIC countries would fight back strongly, as all four have used the ability to copy to create economic growth, and have recently been much more vocal in pushing back about some of the more annoying parts of earlier agreements on intellectual property. Now, the ACTA negotiators keep talking about how they’d like the BRIC countries to join “someday,” but by creating ACTA outside of the WTO, they’ve been able to leave those four powerhouses totally out of the negotiations, so that if they ever join, it’ll be a total “take it or leave it” situation.

Thankfully, those countries are expressing their concerns about the whole thing. Earlier, we noted that Brazil had come out and declared ACTA “illegitimate.” Now it’s India’s turn. At a recent WTO meeting, India (rather politely) appears to have expressed its serious concerns about the “far reaching implication” for those who are not part of ACTA. The link above lists out many of those concerns, but one key one is how ACTA appears to have redefined “commercial scale,” contrary to what the WTO has said constitutes “commercial scale.”

We call attention to the fact that ACTA negotiators have decided among themselves to overturn the decision of the WTO dispute settlement panel in the recent China-Enforcement case by reinterpreting the phrase “commercial scale” with respect to willful trademark counterfeiting and copyright piracy so as to refer to any activity carried out for a direct or indirect economic or commercial advantage. This is startling in light of the WTO panel’s contrary decision that the term “scale” refers to a level of activity, and it highlights the risk to WTO law posed by turning enforcement matters over to small groups of plurilateral negotiators operating outside the WTO legal framework.

India is also pointing out that the negotiators involved in ACTA appear to have exaggerated the “threats” involved (something we’ve pointed out for years, but it’s nice to see it called out in an international forum):

To find an effective and enduring solution to the problem, we need to step back from a purely mercantilist approach. We also need to avoid exaggerating the issue of counterfeiting and piracy since there is lack of empirical data. Even the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has recently raised serious questions concerning the data that has been relied on by proponents of the ACTA to support the effort.

This is also the first time I’ve seen anyone else actually point out that ACTA is, very much, a mercantilist (protectionism) approach.

Filed Under: acta, india, trade agreements