Thursday, January 05, 2012

Trans-Pacific Partnership ("TPP") Agreement - Consultation Deadline of February 14, 2011

World Copyright Terms (created by Balfour Smith of Duke University)

The Canadian government is asking for submissions on the proposed TPP agreement by February 14, 2012.

One of the identified items for consultation is:
  • Views and experiences with the protection of intellectual property rights. 
According to Sean Flynn of American University's Washington College of law, preliminary analysis of "leaked" documents indicate that the USA will be seeking:
  • a life + 70 year copyright term, 
  • to abandon the access to medicines flexibilities of the 2007 New Trade Deal and the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement
  • to create a new international legal requirement to provide copyright owners an exclusive right to block parallel trade of  copyrighted works.
See Sean Flynn's analysis here and here. If Sean is right, the USA will be seeking to impose a regime that goes far beyond  Canada's NAFTA and WTO obligations and even way beyond still controversial IP and trade agreements not yet ratified, such as the 1996 WIPO treaties and ACTA.

This sounds like policy shopping on a grand scale.

The DFAIT document is available here.

Remember - the deadline for comments if February 14, 2012. You may also wish to to include with your submission a  lovely Valentine. 

Valentine's Day
Wikipedia

HK

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