For those of you interested in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement — attached is a paper and some research that I conducted in respect to the agreement and the general implications that it holds in my view. I concluded most of the research right around the time the ACTA agreement was finalised — so provide your reading of it in this context. Generally, I do not think it is a worthwhile agreement to adopt for a range of reasons outlined in the paper — but perhaps, most pertinently, despite the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trades insistence that it won’t — it will have a definitive impact on our local laws when ratified. Particularly interesting, will be the Courts interpretation of ACTA — and you can rest assured that intellectual property rights holders (IPR’s) will be jumping on this agreements collective bandwagon if becomes part of Australia law.
ACTA Pre-Text
The growth of technology in the modern age and its unparalleled advance has rapidly altered the transfer of technology between countries around the world. At the core of this advance is the increasing proliferation of technological innovation and the precipitous development of digital systems which have catalyzed the rate of technology distribution across global borders. Evidently, as a corollary of this rapid technology transfer stems the overarching concern from intellectual property right (‘IPR’s’) holders about the adequate level of enforcement and protection of intellectual property in the global economy. The access and value of such knowledge is particularly relevant in developing knowledge-based economies where ‘expertise, innovation, quality and creativity are the main factors for success’. In this regard and as the socioeconomic divide between the developed and developing world closes, the efficiency and effectiveness of existing judicial mechanisms has been questioned.
The majority of such criticism stemmed from the Second Global Congress on Combating Counterfeiting and Piracy (‘GCCC’) 2005 in Lyon, France where Japan ‘proposed for a new international treaty on counterfeiting and privacy’ which was termed the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Counterfeits and Pirated Goods. Japans interest in raising the spectre of such an agreement originated from the then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi who aimed to
‘[e]stablish Japan as a nation built on a platform of intellectual property … and enhance measures such as speeding up patent examinations, reform of the justice system in the area of patents, and reinforced measures against counterfeit and pirated copies.’
Such an aim spring-boarded Japans policy considerations in the area and a new intellectual property framework was developed which lead to the establishment of the Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters.[4] The aim of this Headquarters was to spearhead intellectual property development and protection in Japan and abroad given the country’s heavy reliance on the global economic benefits of it.
