Related articles expanding on this leak:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141016/07235828845/leake...
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141016/05300128842/lates...
Updated Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement – IP Chapter
21–30 of 32 posts
Re: Updated Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement – IP Chapter
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most controversial part of this for me is this: [NZ/CL/PE/VN/BN/MY/SG/CA4/MX5 propose; US/JP oppose: The objectives of this Chapter are: Who are these parties and why are they negotiating this in secret, away from the public eye. If it is just mundane boilerplate (not finished reading yet) then I have to say that the most surprising thing of all is that we are being governed by copy/paste. I don't think that is t…
New Zealand / Chile / Peru / Vietnam / Brunei / Malaysia / Singapore / Canada / Mexico propose; United States / Japan oppose. International agreements are always negotiated privately before being submitted to legislatures for public comment and ratification. Domestic laws are done the same way. The terms of any major bill before the U.S. Congress, for instance, are first negotiated in private among a smaller group of…
Domestic laws are also written for legislators by corporations through organizations such as ALEC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_...
The best interests of the people being impacted are not being protected. Citizens are being excluded from a process that is supposed to be democratic. It is corrupt.
Re: Updated Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement – IP Chapter
#23Wikileaks press release for background https://www.wikileaks.org/tpp-ip2/pressrelease/
Highlighting what has changed:
> Although there have been a couple of additional rounds of talks since this text, little has changed in them and it is clear that the negotiations are stalling and that the issues raised in this document will be very much on the table in Australia this month.
> some controversial and damaging areas have had little change; issues surrounding digital rights have moved little. However, there are significant industry-favouring additions within the areas of pharmaceuticals and patents. These additions are likely to affect access to important medicines such as cancer drugs and will also weaken the requirements needed to patent genes in plants, which will impact small farmers and boost the dominance of large agricultural corporations like Monsanto.
> some areas that were highlighted after WikiLeaks' last IP Chapter release have seen alterations that reflect the controversy; surgical method patents have been removed from the text. Doctors' groups said this was vitally important for allowing doctors to engage in medical procedures without fear of a lawsuit for providing the best care for their patients. Opposition is increasing to remove the provision proposed by the US and Japan that would require granting of patents for new drugs that are slightly altered from a previous patented one (evergreening), a technique by the pharmaceutical industry to prolong market monopoly.
Re: Updated Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement – IP Chapter
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most controversial part of this for me is this: [NZ/CL/PE/VN/BN/MY/SG/CA4/MX5 propose; US/JP oppose: The objectives of this Chapter are: Who are these parties and why are they negotiating this in secret, away from the public eye. If it is just mundane boilerplate (not finished reading yet) then I have to say that the most surprising thing of all is that we are being governed by copy/paste. I don't think that is t…
New Zealand / Chile / Peru / Vietnam / Brunei / Malaysia / Singapore / Canada / Mexico propose; United States / Japan oppose. International agreements are always negotiated privately before being submitted to legislatures for public comment and ratification. Domestic laws are done the same way. The terms of any major bill before the U.S. Congress, for instance, are first negotiated in private among a smaller group of…
>> International agreements are always negotiated privately before being submitted to legislatures for public comment and ratification.
The whole problem with that is the folks doing the negotiating do not represent the public and they are in effect agreeing to have laws passed. One group is negotiating to have a second group pass laws, who are supposed to represent a third group - the people. I suppose they think bringing it to congress for a vote makes it all OK, but where was the real debate?
Re: Updated Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement – IP Chapter
#25I uploaded it at openrev.org so people can actually comment and highlight the important parts and created a wikileaks group for future documents :)
http://www.openrev.org/paper/secret-tpp-treaty-intellectual-...
Re: Updated Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement – IP Chapter
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
New Zealand / Chile / Peru / Vietnam / Brunei / Malaysia / Singapore / Canada / Mexico propose; United States / Japan oppose. International agreements are always negotiated privately before being submitted to legislatures for public comment and ratification. Domestic laws are done the same way. The terms of any major bill before the U.S. Congress, for instance, are first negotiated in private among a smaller group of…
>> International agreements are always negotiated privately before being submitted to legislatures for public comment and ratification. The whole problem with that is the folks doing the negotiating do not represent the public and they are in effect agreeing to have laws passed. One group is negotiating to have a second group pass laws, who are supposed to represent a third group - the people. I suppose they think br…
The negotiators are official representatives of these national governments. So, they represent their citizens to the extent that any government staff person does so in each respective country. For the U.S., negotiations are led by the U.S. Trade Representative, who is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
Re: Updated Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement – IP Chapter
#27As an IP lawyer, I'd like to say that reading this draft document is super boring. The parts that I skimmed (less than 10%) was all just harmless procedural rules. Can someone point out or quote the controversial parts? Here's the skeleton ToC and a few highlights: A: General Provisions [seems boring] B: Cooperation [seems boring] C: Trademarks D: Geographical Indications E: Patents [including genetic stuff - probabl…
You also missed the extra intellectual property rights for pharmaceuticals in Addendum II. Those are controversial, and in the previous draft, were in the main document. Now they've been moved down to an addendum and are different for different countries.
There's also * [US/JP propose; CL/MY/PE/SG/VN/BN/AU/NZ/CA/MX oppose: 2bis. For greater certainty, a Party may not deny a patent solely on the basis that the product did not result in an enhanced efficacy of the known product when the applicant has set forth distinguishing features establishing that the invention is new, involves an inventive step, and is capable of industrial application.]*
That's a gimme for Big Pharma's "me too" drugs, where it's no better, but slightly different. Clarinex is an example.
Re: Updated Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement – IP Chapter
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't patent natural genes for their natural uses. The controversial thing is patenting the process of using particular gene sequences in order to diagnose particular conditions.
Are you sure about that? I might be wrong, but IIRC, Monsanto's RoundUp-Ready Corn was said to be only transgenetically modified (i.e. the Genetically Modified part of the corn came from another organism's genes), but was patent-protected.
Did they patent the gene or the new artificial combination of genes. Well Monsanto probably did both, but only the later would hold up in court now.
Re: Updated Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement – IP Chapter
#29As an IP lawyer, I'd like to say that reading this draft document is super boring. The parts that I skimmed (less than 10%) was all just harmless procedural rules. Can someone point out or quote the controversial parts? Here's the skeleton ToC and a few highlights: A: General Provisions [seems boring] B: Cooperation [seems boring] C: Trademarks D: Geographical Indications E: Patents [including genetic stuff - probabl…
What's controversial about the document is that our leaders would like to keep it secret . For, you know, your own protection.
It's secret because it would be monumentally ineffective to negotiate a trade agreement in the open. Ratification or rejection, once negotiation completes, should be done in the open, but not the negotiation itself.
The reason is simple: the parties in a trade negotiation generally cannot get everything they want. They have to concede on some points in order to get what they want on other points. Over the course of negotiation, when a party is offering to conceded and what they are standing firm on changes.
You might have a party asking for, say, terms favorable to their automobile manufacturers but to get those they have to allow terms that are unfavorable to their clothing manufactures. As negotiations progress, they may be able to give up the automobile terms to get back the clothing terms and pick up things in agriculture and entertainment.
If all this were open, every one of those changes would be met with intense lobbying and political pressure domestically. The President, every Senator and Representative, every Governor, and probably the mayors of every major city, would be putting pressure on the negotiators to try to favor their biggest backers. The negotiators would be constantly being called to testify at hearings over each iteration. It would be a mess.
Re: Updated Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement – IP Chapter
#30hint for non lawyers-------if you want to understand a document or a legal set of rules-----skip ALL THE BULLSHIT FIRST---------go straight to that part of the document which describes the 'default' or 'termination' and those rules pertaining to 'recourse' 'punishmnet' and 'jurisdiction' .
knowing what defines the actual breakage of the agreement, or when something breaks, ---what happens.
then you can go back and read all the boring crap that your laywer might need to know at some point after you did whatever you wanted to do.