ISDS Case Map
intellectual property
The US Trade Representative's officials say there is no reason to be worried: ACTA (a secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) won't require more than existing US free trade agreements, they say. Meanwhile, business groups are explicit that they believe ACTA should do far more than existing US free trade agreements. Are they having their way?
Costa Rica could miss its Oct. 1 deadline to pass law reforms needed to enter the Free Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA) because of a legal snag in the final bill on intellectual property: Nobody thought to ask the country's indigenous people.
Costa Rica's highest court on Thursday overturned an intellectual property law demanded by the US prior to the enactment of the Central American Free Trade Agreement. The Constitutional Court ruled that lawmakers improperly passed the bill -- which included provisions on biodiversity -- without consulting Indian groups.
In the early hours of Thursday, representatives of the governments of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru agreed to let Peru legislate intellectual property on its own to accommodate its Free Trade Agreement with United States, on the margins of Decision 486 of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN). Bolivia voted against this move in order to preserve the principles and foundations of the CAN.
Peru's minister of Foreign Trade and Tourism, Mercedes Aráoz, announced on Thursday that the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) approved to modify the norm regarding intellectual property, which will allow Peru to implement the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States.
This may include setting up a regional office to focus on issues of traditional knowledge and intellectual property rights.
Article 149 requires the EC Party and the Signatory CARIFORUM states to provide for the protection of plant varieties in accordance with the TRIPS Agreement and to consider, in this connection, accession to UPOV, 1991.
Jamaica enacted legislation for the protection of GIs through the Protection of Geographical Indications Act of 2004. However, protection under the law strictly complies with the standards laid out in the TRIPS Agreement and does not contemplate the "TRIPS plus" and "TRIPS extra" elements incorporated in the EPA.
Bolivia's position on intellectual property rights, on the one hand, and biodiversity, on the other, had earlier put a damper on Colombia and Peru's drive to sign a trade deal with the US and is now affecting that to reach one with "the 27".
The historic Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) skilfully brokered last December between the Caribbean Forum of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (CARIFORUM) and the European Community (EC) is impressively wide in its scope, but the impact of its implementation in countries such as Jamaica is still largely unexplored.
