Intellectual Property Law

Preliminary Analysis of the Officially Released ACTA Text

By gwen

The text of the draft Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was finally released to the public yesterday. We welcome the official release of the ACTA text after two years of negotiations. We can now have a serious public debate about its content and far-reaching impact on citizens' lives.

If the previous leaks (here, here, here and here) left any doubt, the officially released text makes it crystal clear that ACTA is not just about counterfeiting. When ACTA was announced two years ago, it was portrayed as a modest effort at increasing coordination between customs agencies tracking counterfeit physical goods. The officially released text shows that it's far broader. First, it is not just about trademarks; it covers copyright, potentially patents, and all other forms of intellectual property. Second, it's not just about physical goods. It's all about the Internet — which it targets very specifically — and citizens' ability to use it to communicate, collaborate and create. ACTA contains new potential obligations for Internet intermediaries, requiring them to police the Internet and their users, which in turn pose significant concerns for citizens' privacy, freedom of expression and fair use rights.

Read on for our preliminary analysis on copyright issues.

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Full post as published by Electronic Freedom Foundation - Deep Links on April 23, 2010 (boomark / email).