ISDS Case Map
intellectual property
The funny thing about the free trade agreement with the United States is that Australians and Americans see it as being about completely different things. Australia's businesspeople see it as about eliminating the barriers to exports and imports between the two countries, which they regard as a good thing.
Australia's national open source industry body, OSIA (Open Source Industry Australia), and Linux Australia have spoken out about their concerns over the proposed Australian-US Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA), warning that the legal framework of the intellectual property clauses will put the entire Australian software development industry at risk.
Kerryn Williams spoke to David Henry, clinical pharmacology professor at Newcastle University and former Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee member, about how the proposed US-Australia Free Trade Agreement will undermine the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, and increase the price of medicine.
Re: Excluding Intellectual Property from negotiations over
a U.S.- Southern African Customs Union (SACU) Free Trade Agreement
Welcome to the brave new world of “Free” Trade. This is a world that extends beyond the World Trade Organisation. This may be difficult to comprehend, but the fact of the matter is that global capital, led by the US government, seeks more and more to tread where even the WTO did not.
The government lied when it said it would exclude medicines from the list of products included under the prospective freetrade agreement between Thailand and the United States, a seminar was told yesterday.
One of Australia's most recognised Linux developers, Dr Andrew Tridgell, has attacked the proposed Australia-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA), claiming it could pit local open source developers against Microsoft in a "patent war".
Charles Freeman, assistant US trade representative for China affairs, is scheduled to meet officials at the Ministry of Economic Affairs today, marking the first trade talks between the two countries since October 2002, a government official said yesterday.
The efforts to establish global and regional ‘free trade' agreements have met with considerable resistance. People around the world suffering the effects of so-called free trade have steadily built a movement to reject the dominant economic model.
As public-health groups urge wider use of generic drugs to lower the cost of treating AIDS and other diseases in developing countries, U.S. trade negotiators -- prodded by the drug industry -- are taking the opposite stance in new trade pacts, seeking to strengthen protections for costlier brand-name drugs.
