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CETA Negotiations Continue Under Cloud of ACTA Concerns

The Canada – EU Trade Agreement negotiations continue this week in Brussels with both parties hoping to wrap up many outstanding issues. According to information provided by Canadian officials at a briefing earlier this month, the plan is to narrow the areas of disagreement to no more than ten issues, with ministers meeting in Europe in November to try to forge an agreement on the contentious areas. While patent issues will clearly be part of the November discussion, Canadian officials advised that the copyright chapter was largely concluded. In fact, when I asked directly whether the text would require changes to current Canadian copyright law, the response was that it would not. 

Notwithstanding those reassurances, Canadian officials acknowledged the border measures issues were still unresolved. Moreover, days later a European briefing offered a somewhat different take on the copyright provisions. La Quadrature du Net, a leading European NGO, reports that the European Commission confirmed that the controversial criminal ACTA provisions were still included in the CETA draft.

The reports have sparked a wave of new concern (see here, here, here, here, and here) with suggestions that ACTA is “back from the dead in Europe.”

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October 17, 2012 14 comments News

Ontario Public School Boards Preparing To Drop Access Copyright Next Year

The Ontario Public School Board Association last week advised school boards across the province that they should prepare to stop using the Access Copyright licence effective next year. The advisory indicates that the Counsel of Ministers of Education, Copyright, which represents education ministers across the country, has received a legal opinion that confirms that K-12 schools no longer require the Access Copyright licence since they can rely on fair dealing for the small percentage of copying in schools that is unlicensed or copied without permission. A 2005 study of copying in Canadian K-12 schools conducted for Access Copyright found that 88% of copying of copyright works already had the necessary permissions without the need for an additional licence. The Access Copyright portion covered as little as 6% of the total copying and given the recent Supreme Court of Canada decisions, the schools believe that this copying is covered by fair dealing.

The advisory to the school boards includes the following (the fair dealing guidelines, which are very similar to the fair dealing policy adopted by the ACCC, can be found here):

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October 15, 2012 1 comment News

Government Study Finds CETA Drug Patent Reforms Would Cost Canadians Billions

The Canadian Press reports that an internal study by Industry Canada and Health Canada estimates that EU patent demands as part of the Canada – EU Trade Agreement could increase Canadian health care costs by up to $2 billion per year. The drug patent issue is viewed as a key […]

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October 15, 2012 2 comments News

Gordon Ritchie on CETA and the TPP

Gordon Ritchie, one of the architects of the Canada – U.S. Free Trade Agreement, on CETA and the TPP: from what I have seen of the proposed deal with the European Community, it is not at all obvious what Canada stands to gain. The benefits are even less clear from […]

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October 15, 2012 1 comment News

TPP Negotiations Present Far More Questions Than Answers

Peter Clark posts an opinion piece at iPolitics that raises many questions with the Trans Pacific Partnership. Clark notes that “the TPP will not be worth much to Canada” given that we already have trade agreements with the U.S., Mexico, Chile and Peru.

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October 15, 2012 Comments are Disabled News