The World Trade Organization has posted further information on last week's Council meeting where India, China, and other developing countries raised concerns with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The report notes the following:
Briefly, China’s and India’s lengthy statements argued that ACTA and other agreements could:
- Conflict with TRIPS Agreement (a reference to TRIPS Art.1.1) and other WTO agreements, and cause legal uncertainty
- Undermine the balance of rights, obligations and flexibilities that were carefully negotiated in the various WTO agreements
- Distort trade or create trade barriers, and disrupt goods in transit or transhipment
- Undermine flexibilities built into TRIPS (such as for public health, and trade in generic medicines)
- Undermine governments’ freedom to allocate resources on intellectual property by forcing them to focus on enforcement
- Set a precedent that would require regional and other agreements to follow suit. (One example cited was negotiations involving CARIFORUM, the group of Caribbean states. However, a delegation representing CARIFORUM said it understood the concerns but denied that CARIFORUM would have to apply ACTA’s provisions.)
They also argued that the focus on enforcement did not take into account a country’s level of development. A number of developing countries broadly supported the concern.
