ACTA Negotiations Concluded In Japan

by Mary Swire, for LawAndTax-News.com, Hong Kong

06 October 2010

The government of Japan, which hosted the talks in Tokyo, has announced that the 11th and final round of the negotiations for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has been concluded successfully.

Participants in the negotiations included Australia, Canada, the European Union (EU) represented by the European Commission, the EU Presidency (Belgium) and EU member states, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States.

ACTA aims to establish a comprehensive, first-time, international framework that will assist parties to the agreement in their efforts to combat effectively the infringement of intellectual property rights (IPR), in particular the proliferation of counterfeiting and piracy, for example the piracy of music, and films and the counterfeiting of clothing brands

It will include state-of-the-art provisions on the enforcement of IPR, including provisions on civil, criminal, and border enforcement measures, robust cooperation mechanisms among ACTA parties to assist in their enforcement efforts, and the establishment of best practices for effective IPR enforcement.

During the negotiations, there were informal meetings between stakeholders, including representatives from non-governmental organizations and business leaders, and the participants in the ACTA negotiating round. The government of Japan said that it offered these meetings to give interested parties and government officials the opportunity to interact and discuss the issues concerned with ACTA.

It has been announced that participants in the negotiations resolved nearly all substantive issues and produced a consolidated and largely finalized text of the proposed agreement, which will be submitted to their respective authorities. The participants agreed to work to resolve the small number of outstanding issues that require further examination, with a view to finalizing the text of the agreement as promptly as possible.

Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, Akihiro Ohata, said that: “Japan will make every effort toward the ACTA’s early activation. Japan will also continue to expand efforts for worldwide protection of intellectual property rights via actions such as encouraging non-participants to accede to the ACTA.”

It was added that the participants will publicly release the text of the agreement shortly. However, repeated previous decisions not to release its text have led to accusations of a lack of transparency (for example by the European Parliament), and to concern as to its actual terms from some quarters, particularly those concerned with internet and digital rights.

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