[LINK] ArsT: 'India vows to sabotage ACTA'

[Roger Clarke]

India vows to sabotage ACTA
By Nate Anderson
Ars Technica
Last updated a day ago, i.e. 2-3 June 2010
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/india-vows-to-sabotage-acta.ars

Fed up with the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement 
(ACTA), India hopes to whip up an anti-ACTA chutney so spicy that 
negotiators have no choice but to purge every trace of the loathed 
agreement from their systems.

Though countries like Morocco are involved, rich countries have 
driven the ACTA process. The World Trade Organization-ignored. The 
World Intellectual Property Organization-bypassed. Instead of using 
the very fora that they played such a role in establishing, countries 
like the US, EU, Canada, Japan, and Australia formed a coalition of 
the willing. ACTA has been negotiated in secret, though the recently 
released negotiating draft text envisions a permanent secretariat 
that will receive new members.

In other words, existing international institutions, where countries 
like Brazil, China, and India have recently acquired some real power, 
will be bypassed to create the tough new restrictions in ACTA.

ACTA's rules are clearly meant to apply to countries like India down the line.

As Canadian law professor Michael Geist puts it, "The reality is that 
ACTA is largely designed to apply to the very countries that are now 
preparing to openly oppose it... The best approach to gaining broader 
acceptance is to include those countries in the talks, not leave them 
on the outside in the hope of later pressuring them to comply with an 
agreement from which they were deliberately excluded."

India hopes to derail the whole process. According a new report in 
India Times, the country's leaders want to form their own anti-ACTA 
coalition.

"We will hold talks with like-minded countries (read Brazil, China, 
Egypt, etc.) and may oppose the ACTA proposal jointly as well as 
individually by holding talks with countries involved," said an 
anonymous government official.

India doesn't worry so much about ACTA's much-discussed Internet 
section, but about issues like pharmaceutical production. According 
to the paper, infringement could occur "if a medicine or product is 
made for which a company holds a patent in any country, no matter how 
unclear in scope and validity of the patent is."

Such rules could affect in-transit shipments. If an Indian drug-maker 
ships a batch of pills to Mexico, and those pills aren't protected by 
patents in either country, the shipment could still be seized by US 
authorities. If valid US patents apply, the shipment could be seized 
if it ever enters a US port on its way to Mexico.

But trying to derail the trade agreement, which is nearing 
completion, could be difficult for countries not involved in the 
process.


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
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Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University