IP Justice has published a report on last week's FTAA meetings in Miami.
http://www.ipjustice.org/FTAA/miami.shtml (report also below)
IP Justice Report from the FTAA Trade Ministerial Meeting in Miami November 16 - 20, 2003 www.ipjustice.org
Excessive Force: “Bush Bullies Foreign Trade Ministers and US Protesters”
By IP Justice Executive Director Robin D. Gross, Esq. Published November 21, 2003
I. No Agreement Reached in Miami, US Pushes for Bloated IPR Chapter in FTAA Treaty
II. IP Justice Participation at FTAA Civil Society Forum on Intellectual Property Rights
1. Lack of Transparency and the Undemocratic Process in Treaty’s Creation 2. Expanded Copyrights in FTAA Endanger Civil Liberties and Competition 3. Drug Patents and Trademark Rights Pose Serious Threat to Public Health 4. FTAA’s Patenting of Life Endangers Food and Agriculture in Americas 5. Civil Society Recommends Trade Ministers Delete Entire IP Chapter
III. IP Justice Participation at Workshop: Negotiating Intellectual Property Provisions in Free Trade Agreements
1. FTAA’s Expansion of Trademarks Threatens Freedom of Expression 2. Wisdom of High Patent Protection for Poor Countries Questioned 3. Exclusive Rights Over Generic Medicine Test Data Threatens Public Health 4. US Pressing for Highest Level of Intellectual Property Protection onPlanet
IV. Police Use Violence and Excessive Force Against Peaceful Anti-FTAA Demonstrators and Journalists
V. US Pressure on South for Stricter Intellectual Property Rights Intensifies
IP Justice Report from the FTAA Trade Ministerial Meeting in Miami November 16–20, 2003
Excessive Force:
“Bush Bullies Foreign Trade Ministers and US Protesters”
By IP Justice Executive Director Robin D. Gross, Esq.
Published November 21, 2003
I. No Agreement Reached in Miami, US Pushes for Bloated IPR Chapter in FTAA Treaty
As the statue of US President George Bush II is toppled in London by thousands of protesters angry with his botched foreign policy, his Administration was in Miami strong-arming South American trade ministers and shooting rubber bullets at journalists and peaceful protesters outside the historic treaty negotiations.
Trade talks between the 34 countries in the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) Treaty ended shortly after they began as Brazil, Venezuela and others refused to succumb to US pressure to adopt the Bush Administration’s bloated agenda for intellectual property rights, investments, agriculture subsidies, and other controversial subjects in the agreement.
In a last ditch effort to save failing negotiations, the Bush Administration yielded to the South’s resistance to scrap the comprehensive treaty and agree instead to a “FTAA-lite” version of the treaty. According to the November 19 Ministerial Declaration, which was the only agreement reached at the summit, “countries may assume different levels of commitments.” This means that the treaty’s substance will be scaled back to a “common and balanced set of rights and obligations applicable to all countries.” The declaration also enables those countries that want to pursue additional obligations to initiate plurilateral negotiations. Under the new deal, market access to the US will be commensurate with the level of obligations that countries are willing to undertake with the US. But no issues have been taken off the negotiating table, as countries are no closer on agreeing to Bush’s demands.
The Ministerial Declaration further encourages countries to enter into bi-lateral and multi-lateral obligations besides FTAA. The Bush Administration’s trade office very recently concluded talks with Chile, Jordan, and Singapore over intellectual property rights. On November 19, 2003 the US announced it will begin bi-lateral treaty talks with Panama, Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru in early 2004. In December 2003, Bush’s trade officers will conclude a treaty with five Central American countries (CAFTA) and also started talks with the Dominican Republic. These separate agreements raise concerns over leading to a greater fragmentation among countries instead of the hemispheric integration that the FTAA aims for. Since a comprehensive FTAA has now failed, the Bush Administration’s foreign trade policy is to “divide and conquer” the Southern states, picking them off one by one in trade agreements where they hold even less bargaining power against the US than in FTAA.
One of the most unpopular chapters in the FTAA Treaty is on intellectual property rights. As a result, the ministers had to set a special meeting in 2004 in the Dominican Republic specifically to discuss intellectual property rights.
Negotiations over the terms for providing market access on the new sliding scale basis are to conclude by September 30, 2004. The final FTAA Treaty is supposed to be complete by December 2004 in Brazil, but many believe that goal is unrealistic and Venezuela has reiterated its reservation that the treaty will enter into force in 2005.
The FTAA Third Draft Agreement has been released to the public and contains little difference from the previous draft that expands intellectual property rights. The Third Draft of the IPR chapter still contains proposals to outlaw legitimate consumer circumvention, to send citizens to prison for non-commercial infringements, to extend copyright’s term to 70 years after the life of the author, and to restrict personal use to a single copy by a single individual.
Intellectual property rights will continue to be one of the most hotly contested chapters in the FTAA Agreement with pressure from the US to increase rights. However, the US is the only country in the Western Hemisphere that is a net-exporter of intellectual property. All 33 other countries are overwhelmingly net-importers of intellectual property from the US. It makes little sense for these countries to enact laws that will only send scarce domestic resources to Hollywood and Redmond.
II. IP Justice Participation at FTAA Civil Society Forum on Intellectual Property Rights
IP Justice participated at the FTAA’s newly created civil society forum that met to discuss the social implications for the treaty. We met across the street from the FTAA’s business forum, which has been meeting for years to discuss the business aspects of the treaty.
The Americas Trade and Sustainable Development Forum (ATSDF) civil society forum was helpful to meet people from the US and abroad who are similarly concerned about the treaty’s harmful implications. IP Justice participated in the intellectual property forum, where members of civil society met to discuss the human and social implications of the chapter on intellectual property rights. But we could only speak among ourselves and not directly to foreign trade ministers about our concerns. Trade ministers met with each other down the street at the Intercontinental Hotel, where members of the civil society forum were not permitted access.
The purpose of ATSDF civil society forum was to come up with a brief recommendation to present to the ministers in each of the nine issues discussed in the treaty. At the final ATSDF plenary meeting on November 18, we drafted our recommendation to the trade ministers that the entire chapter on intellectual property rights should be deleted from the FTAA Treaty.
The International Center for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) outlined the process of the development of the FTAA chapter on intellectual property rights. Although official talks on the substance of the treaty began in 1994 in secret meetings, no draft of its text was released to the public for consideration until November 2002 – eight years after talks began in the US. Since it was created in secret, there is no way to identify who or what country originally inserted clauses into the draft treaty. Nor is there a requirement that all the treaty’s sections be agreed to by a consensus of countries participating. After nine years of negotiations, 98% of the text of the intellectual property rights chapter remains in brackets (which means without agreement), although talks are supposed to conclude in less than one year.
The intellectual property rights chapter proposes that all signatory countries must adopt four different World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) agreements whose drafting is not finished and 2 WIPO Treaties whose drafting has not even been started yet (broadcasting and database protections). Many Southern countries have intentionally steered away from signing onto WIPO Treaties, which they view as stifling their development and ability to compete with the US in important technology sectors.
FTAA’s IPR chapter expands the subject matter of intellectual property rights, creates new forms of intellectual property rights, and eliminates exceptions and flexibilities to these rights. The chapter a Received on Wed Nov 26 2003 - 00:25:54 GMT
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