Posts Tagged ‘patents’

March18

First SOPA then ACTA, now TAFTA- here we go again

By: Burcu Kilic

Our Trans-Atlantic Call for Exclusion of Intellectual Property from EU-US Trade Talks

US trade policy is currently focused on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), for which President Obama hopes to complete negotiations by October. If the agreement is concluded according to plan, the TPP will include the United States, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, New Zealand, Australia, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam.  Japan is signaling its interest to join and Korea would possibly follow Japan. The treaty would remain open for other countries to join as well, so long as they meet the required standards.

Meanwhile, along the Atlantic, the US is preparing to launch negotiations for a Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA)—or what is being touted as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

The establishment of a Trans-Atlantic partnership is not a new idea; the possibility of creating a Trans-Atlantic Free Trade area had been discussed occasionally in the past, especially during the 1970s and 1980s. However, informal discussions failed to solidify into something more concrete.

The United States and the European Union have both entered into economic partnership agreements across the globe, but never before with each other. In 2011, American and European politicians keen on “shaping globalization” (i.e. setting rules for the 21st century) outside the official global forums set up the High-Level Working Group on Growth and Jobs (HLWG) to assess the feasibility of a comprehensive transatlantic trade agreement.  The deal between the world’s two most important economic powers hopes to be a “game-changer.”

The BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa and perhaps most notably China – have not been invited to either negotiation. It may be the case that these deals aim to better prepare the EU and the US for an upcoming economic battle with the BRICS and other emerging powers.  The BRICS countries have a combined GDP now equivalent to that of the EU or the US.  “This is about the weight of the western, free world in world economic and political affairs,” declared EU Trade Commissioner De Gucht.

The HLWG released its interim report in 2012 identifying policies and measures to increase EU-US trade and investment. The interim report noted that, “it would not be feasible in negotiations to seek to reconcile across the board differences in the IPR obligations that each typically includes in its comprehensive trade agreements.”

However, industry groups soon realized that the so-called Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement presents a perfect opportunity to set “golden standards” for IP regulation and enforcement, which emerging markets like China and India could then be pushed to accept. Groups like PhRMA urged the EU and US to include IP to further strengthen the international regime. Eventually, the HLWG changed its position and is now recommending the inclusion of an IP chapter, although a “limited” one. The Final Report issued by the HLWG recommends that TAFTA negotiations “address a limited number of significant IPR issues of interest to either side, without prejudice to the outcome.”

It is not clear what the HLWG is trying to say. The US and EU regimes are not alike. Geographical indications, for instance, continue to create a transatlantic trade conflict between the US and EU. They have fundamentally different philosophies on the issue.  The EU is committed to enhancing its vast gastronomic heritage of excellence, and pushes for more restrictive rules. The US wants to maintain the status quo to help giant companies like Kraft sell items like “parmesan” cheese around the world.

Any attempt to boost patent or copyright rules in favor of rights holders and against the interests of consumers would be a significant mistake and invite major public resistance. The defeat of ACTA in the EU and the overnight death of SOPA in the US were no accidents. They should serve as a stark reminder to policymakers on either side of the Atlantic.

It goes without saying we will not hold back from raising our voices once again in defense of our fundamental rights to free speech and health, and to uphold the benefits of an open knowledge economy.

To read the declaration of  transatlantic coalition of 45 consumer, public health and Internet freedom groups, visit http://www.citizen.org/ip-out-of-tafta.

Posted in: Activism, Consumer Protection, Pharmaceuticals, Trade0 comments

July20

We Can End AIDS: Join Us this Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

By: Burcu Kilic

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) was first recognized in the United States in 1981. The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was identified soon after in 1983. By the mid-1980’s, the disease was recognized as an international epidemic which had spread throughout most of the world. Millions have lost their lives since.

Three decades later, we may finally have an opportunity to end AIDS."We Can End AIDS 2012"

This year, new science demonstrated that treatment can also be effective as HIV prevention.  For the first time it is becoming possible to model an end to the epidemic. Activists’ calls for an AIDS-free generation have been echoed worldwide.

But ending AIDS will depend in part on massively scaling up access to treatment. A major obstacle is the monopoly power of the giant pharmaceutical companies.

In 2000, basic HIV treatment cost up to $15,000 per person, per year (ppy). In developing countries, treatment was out of reach for all but the very wealthy, and HIV was a death sentence.

Then, activists working together across borders and increasing availability of generic medicines facilitated a treatment revolution, eventually driving basic HIV medicine prices to under $150 ppy – a 99% cost reduction.  Today, antiretroviral (ARV) medicines provide eight million people in low- and middle-income countries with long term hope for a healthy and long living future.

But millions more still await access, and lifelong AIDS treatment requires access to newer and more potent drug regimens, due to drug resistance.

Unfortunately, most newer ARVs are under the monopoly control of multinational pharmaceutical companies. The high treatment costs for these medicines threaten to block the remarkable progress already achieved and impede the goal of “getting to zero.”

To continue the treatment revolution and seek an end to AIDS, we need competition and access not only for off-patent ARVs but also for the patent-protected and very expensive second- and third-line ARVs. Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program is working with partners in more than one dozen countries to challenge Big Pharma’s monopoly abuses and realize this vision.

We are also fighting to protect access to medicines in the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade agreement under negotiation now between the United States and countries in Latin America and Asia. The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has advanced a Big Pharma wish list that would lengthen, strengthen and broaden pharmaceutical monopolies throughout the region. We are inspiring governments and health advocates fight back.

We envision a very different Asia-Pacific region partnership–one that advances pharmaceutical access and innovation simultaneously.  We believe better public policy is possible. We firmly hold to the promise of an “AIDS-free generation”. Getting there requires standing up to Big Pharma, promoting competition, and expanding access to medicines.

That’s why, this Tuesday Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program will join the We Can End AIDS March and ask for “accountability from Big Pharma and government officials around the world”.

We need your support to create a future free of AIDS. Please join us on Tuesday and let’s raise our voices against Big Pharma.

Posted in: Activism, Health, Pharmaceuticals, Trade0 comments

June25

Les Nouvelles de Bruxelles : The Changing Politics of the Knowledge Economy

By: Burcu Kilic

The politics of the global knowledge economy are shifting: from mercantilism to co-operation, from closed commercial regimes toward open source. Last week, the European Parliament Committee on International Trade (INTA) passed a report recommending the rejection of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Since the European Union (EU) and its 22 member states signed ACTA in January 2012, ACTA has caused nothing but consternation in Europe. Citizens of Poland, Bulgaria and the Germany took to the streets to show their opposition. These protests initiated a pan-European movement awakening the spirit of 1968. Young Europeans asked policy makers and politicians in Brussels to respect their rights, privacy and freedom on the Internet.

The ‘old continent’ woke up to what people in the global South have known and fought for over many years. Intellectual property (IP) is not merely a commercial or trade-related issue or something we can allow to be monopolized by corporations. It’s about us. It touches human life. IP rules can dictate how we access, disseminate and share knowledge, technology and information. They are not only about corporations and their interests. They are also about our internet freedom, privacy, scientific research, textbooks and journals, traditional and cultural knowledge, stewardship of biodiversity, arts and literature. The current orthodox IP standards, largely imposed by corporations, create exclusive controls over knowledge and information and have proved to be inadequate and frequently inappropriate in today’s knowledge-based economy.

What ACTA did – albeit inadvertently – was provide an impetus for a new vision of prioritizing people’s rights over IP fundamentalism in the 21st century. In recent decades, there has been a rush to over-regulate this relatively new and rather conceptually confusing form of property. The IP maximalist perspectives create modern juridical bureaucracies; monstrous, absurd legal procedures and protocols. From the perspective of people, the over-aggressive rules pushed through agreements like ACTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are understood as a declaration of war threatening personal rights and freedoms on the Internet and in our daily lives. This is why the people of Europe raised their voice to warn policy makers in Brussels about the inadequacy of the current IP maximalist model, which places IP monopolies at its heart instead of sharing or disseminating knowledge, technology or information.

The ‘war against piracy’ turned into a revolution against the corporate internet. Brussels could not stay indifferent to the outcry. First, the Committee on Legal Affairs (Juri), Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) and the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) voted to express “opinions against ACTA”. If three strikes weren’t enough, a vote in the Development Committee gave a fourth. Finally, on June 21 the trade committee (INTA) dealt a serious blow to ACTA. The INTA vote shows that European politicians increasingly understand we, the people, will not let healthcare and internet policy be dictated by a very few outdated corporate interests. Rather, we need forward-looking, flexible policies for technology, knowledge and creative works that unleash our human genius. ACTA is a retrograde policing approach to the knowledge economy: it promotes IP fundamentalism, it treats competition like criminality and the internet as a threat.

We cannot count ACTA out yet. The final voting in the European Parliament will be held on the 4th of July. The Fourth of July is an important day for Americans, which honors the birthday of the United States of America and the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. But it seems that it would also be a memorable day for the Europeans, honoring the sense of European citizenship in today’s knowledge economy based on the values of individual freedom, equality, tolerance, privacy and democracy .

Thanks to Peter Maybarduk for his contributions to this post.

Read more here

Follow us on twitter: @PCMedsAccess

 

Posted in: Activism, Consumer Protection, Internet Free Speech, Open Government, Pharmaceuticals, Trade, Uncategorized0 comments

June21

Can you say “Déjà vu” in Spanish?

By: Keanan McGonigle

Dear Neighbor:

Photo Credit: Voices from Russia

Congratulations on your inclusion in the elite group of states that are currently negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement! Your acceptance into this proposed “historic, 21st century trade agreement” means that much of the “burden” of making laws and regulations for your nation will be taken off of you. No worries; lobbyists for Hollywood and American pharmaceutical companies and more than 600 official “corporate trade advisers” to the Office of United States Trade Representative (USTR) will help take care of the details.

Sorry to mention it, but we’re afraid many of your laws pertaining to intellectual property (IP), affecting issues from Internet privacy to access to affordable medications, might need a little “tweaking” to ensure they comply with the specifications of U.S. corporate “advisers.” The USTR’s demands at the TPP negotiations read like a wish list from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and YOU have the opportunity to grant all their wishes.

You see, the condition the U.S. imposed for Mexico to get a seat at this corporate banquet was that Mexico agree to accept everything that the other countries already have negotiated over the past three years. Sure, NAFTA required some nasty changes to your IP laws. Remember the millions your government wasted trying to lift the U.S. patent on common yellow beans that a bio-prospector filed after NAFTA? Well, wait until you get a look at the 21st century NAFTA on steroids!

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Posted in: Activism, Congress, Consumer Protection, Health, Internet Free Speech, Litigation, Pharmaceuticals, Regulation, Social Justice, Uncategorized4 comments

June14

While Battle against ACTA Rages, next Clash against TPP Looms on the Horizon

By: Keanan McGonigle

Photo credit: Andre Kelpe, Twitter - @fs111

In light of the extensive protests of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) which took place Saturday, June 9 all across Europe, Australia, and the U.S., concerns about similarities between ACTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) have been surfacing. ACTA was signed by the U.S., Australia, Japan, Canada, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea in October 2011, quickly followed by the European Union (EU) and 22 of its member states in January 2012. Nevertheless, it faced almost immediate push-back from citizens of the EU, most notably in Poland, where crowds came out to protest ACTA in large numbers and members of Parliament wore “Anonymous” masks into the legislative chambers. The public’s outcry showed results. Four committees of the European Parliament, which must ratify ACTA for it to be adopted as EU law, recently opposed the agreement. Resistance to ACTA springs largely from copyright provisions which legal experts and Internet freedom advocates fear would lead to censorship and breaches of privacy rights. A similar treaty, the TPP Agreement, is currently being negotiated in secret by nine Asia-Pacific countries: Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, Peru, the U.S., and Vietnam.

The parallels between the TPPA and ACTA are uncanny. They contain similarly harsh provisions pertaining to intellectual property rights as well as an appalling lack of transparency in the negotiations of the agreements. Many tracking the TPP say its opacity makes the ACTA process look like a pinnacle of open government in comparison. One common theme running through the accords is the United States’ insistence on stringent IP rules, largely at the behest of the entertainment, content, and pharmaceutical industries. Working through lobbying groups like the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), these corporations work to secure draconian IP rules by influencing trade agreements such as the TPP. Other lobbying groups influencing the negotiations are PhRMA and BIO, representing the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries respectively. The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) is the governmental body responsible for representing the U.S.’s interests in trade discussions. But USTR has been acting as a mouthpiece for these industries throughout the course of the TPP negotiations, advancing the interests of the 1% and ignoring the pleas of the 99%.

The European Parliament scheduled a vote on ACTA for July 3. With the upcoming 13th round of negotiations on the TPPA between member-countries to be held on July 2 – 10 in San Diego, California, there is urgent need to act to protect internet freedom and privacy and access to affordable medicines globally. While ACTA represents a blatant infringement of privacy rights and excessive IP provisions, USTR’s proposals to the TPP go even further. For example, the US-proposed IP chapter aims to lengthen, strengthen, and broaden IP monopolies, and in some areas is more heavy-handed than ACTA. The parallels between these two agreements have not gone unnoticed, and activists are using momentum against ACTA to fight TPP. The grassroots activist group “Internet Freedom Movement” recently began this page opposing the TPP, the website “killacta.org” encourages visitors to write to their legislators to oppose both agreements, and the advocacy group Citizens Trade Campaign has a similar project.

Time is running out to oppose the stringent IP rules and Internet privacy infringement embedded in ACTA. But even if ACTA is vetoed in Europe, the TPP still lurks out there, threatening our due process rights, privacy, and rights on the internet. And while the future of TPP is unclear at this point, one thing is certain: “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over…”

Posted in: Activism, Consumer Protection, Internet Free Speech, Open Government, Pharmaceuticals, This Week, Trade, Uncategorized2 comments

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