Yet Another Round Of ACTA Negotiations In Sight

As reported earlier, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a proposed plurilateral agreement for the purpose of establishing international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement. After a series of draft text leaks in 2008, 2009 and 2010 the negotiating parties had published a first official version of the then current draft on April 20, 2010. A new consolidated draft text, reflecting the outcome of the final (Tokyo) round of negotiations, was released on October 06, 2010. Now, papers have leaked saying that ACTA Parties agreed to have a technical meeting to finalise the legal scrub of the ACTA text. Australia has offered to host the meeting on November 30 to December 03 or, if neccessary, up to December 04, 2010.

It appears not to be easy to properly assess the impact this ACTA version might have on future Intellectual Property enforcement regimes in the European Union and elsewhere. In a paper drafted by the EU Commission DG Trade now circulating on the Internet a statement is given to the effect that while it was obviously in the interest of the Commission to achieve a result in the negotiations that is as close as possible to the rules in force in the EU (including TRIPS), it w…