Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Urgent ACTA Communique

Today a communique altering ACTA was released with an endorsement of over 600 public interest orgnisations and individuals. The communique concluded that ACTA is a deficient product of a deeply flawed process. The concerns expressed here cover seven areas: fundamental rights and freedoms; the Internet; access to medicines; scope and nature of IP laws; international trade; international law and institutions; and democratic process.

Unlike the negotiators' assertation [1], the public interest groups reached a conclusion that ACTA would undermine a full enjoyment of fundamental rights and liberties including domestic and internationally protected human rights to health, privacy and the protection of personal data, free expression, education, cultural participation, and right to a fair legal process, including fair trial and presumptions of innocence.

The full text of the communique with the list of endorsement is here.

[1] When the draft text of ACTA was made public, the USTR said that ACTA will not interfere with a signatory’s ability to respect its citizens' fundamental rights and liberties.

Saturday, June 05, 2010

Liability of a Shipping Company That Delivers Patent Infringing Products

Injunctive remedy against intermediaries is one of the key elements of the ACTA proposals. The intermediaries under ACTA are defined as broadly as to encompass entities whose services are used by a third party to infringe an intellectual property rights (Articles 2.X and 2.5.X)). The language came from the European Directive on IPR  enforcement (Articles 8, 9 and 11 of Directive 2004/48/EC) and aims to go beyond Internet service providers and their liability of third party’s copyright infringement.