A recent issue of Inside US Trade featured a detailed report (sub required) on the European Union positions in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations. The article cites comments from Pedro Velasco Martins, an EU official involved in the ACTA negotiations and points to several areas of disagreement:
- The scope of ACTA coverage. The Europeans would like to extend ACTA to patents. Canadian officials are known to want to limit it to copyright and trademark.
- Anti-camcording provisions. The Europeans are not supportive of a specific anti-camcording provisions. The U.S. obviously is and pressured Canada to enact such a provision in 2007.
- Dispute Resolution. The Europeans prefer a “peer review” approach to review compliance. Other countries are known to support a judicial process complete with penalties for non-compliance.
- Internet provisions. The Europeans are not prepared to go beyond existing EU law of any Internet provisions. This potential makes the European Parliament’s support to block a three strikes system important.
These divisions point to the value of more countries entering into the negotiations as that will provide a greater diversity of views at the table.
Tags: A.C.T.A., Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement, Michael Geist