At least they have avoided giving it an Orwellian name including the phrase "free trade". Free trade can be described in a few sentences. These voluminous inter-governmental managed trade agreements are just protectionism by another name.
Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter
71–80 of 181 posts
Re: Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I generally like Obama (except for Espionage Act prosecutions, continued existence of Guantanamo detention centers, and drone wars), but this one makes no sense. What's there left to like? Legal pot and gay marriage?
Wait, pot became legal? Why didn't anyone tell me!
Here in Oregon, pot just became legal today.
Re: Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Can a progressive democrat please explain to me why their hero is supporting this? Did Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren start supporting TPP when I wasn't looking? Or was "progressive" an elaborate typo for "centrist"?
Ha. Fair weather fan.
For that accusation to work (even ignoring the difference between being a "fan" of Obama and agreeing that Obama is a "progressive" rather than a "centrist", which are really orthogonal concerns), you'd have to have me ever claiming Obama was a progressive rather than a centrist.
Re: Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter
#74When the director of policy for Doctors Without Borders tells the public that "U.S. negotiators have basically functioned as drug lobbyists" and "We consider this the worst-ever agreement in terms of access to medicine", there's really little more that needs saying. I love that the best defense unnamed "U.S. officials" can offer is that "major compromises" will likely still be made. In other words: yes we're acting a…
I don't see why his affiliation with Doctors Without Borders carries argument-ending weight here. They do noble work, but their interest is the well-being of people outside the U.S. The best case scenario for them is U.S. companies doing all the expensive R&D, and their patients outside the U.S. getting the resulting drugs for free.
The USTR, in contrast, has the sole responsibility of maximizing the benefit to the U.S. It's in our interest if people outside the U.S. have to pay us a bunch of money to get the drugs we invent.
That is not to say that we shouldn't be giving free drugs to people who need it. But that's a policy decision decidedly outside the scope of the USTR. We have agencies like USAID whose job it is to handle humanitarian aid.
Re: Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Democrat or Republican, this is about rich vs poor, and neither party represents the poor.
I'm not poor and I'm against the TPP. My opinion has nothing to do with how it treats the poor. I don't like how it empowers corporate interests at the expense of individual rights.
Poor is relative. The rich at war with everyone are not the 6 figure developers, or even the one-time cashout millionaires who sell their startup to Google. Its the billionaires who control entire swathes of global industry and are ego tripping power maniacs who are addicted to it. Its the Waltons and Kochs, not the Carmacks and Grams. Its even more the dynasties whose names are not national news because they own every news network or their best friend owns it.
If someone else in the world makes as much as you do in a year in a day (or better yet an hour for 99.99995% of people), you are incredibly poor relative to them. And 99.99999% of humanity falls into that class of poor.
The TPP is not being written for the betterment of the "rich" over the "poor". Its being written to make about 70,000 (overwhelmingly) men even richer than they already are, by subjugating national sovereignty underneath their corporate will.
Re: Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter
#76Can a progressive democrat please explain to me why their hero is supporting this? PS To those trying to claim he isn't a progressive... Obama may not be the progressive you want, but he is the one you deserve.
Obama is not a progressive and I don't think he's been particularly supported by progressives (other than the fact that they tend to vote for Democrats). The possible exception is his initial campaign when he was an unknown quantity and, like all such politicians, everyone projected their "Hope" onto him.
> Obama is not a progressive and I don't think he's been particularly supported by progressives (other than the fact that they tend to vote for Democrats).
A lot of progressives supported Obama in 2008 primaries, especially toward the end of that season, because, as it was clear who the reasonably viable contenders were for the Democratic nomination, Obama generally seemed slightly to the progressive side of Hillary Clinton (which is perfectly compatible with him being a centrist Democrat rather than a particularly progressive one; I don't think anyone in the Democratic party has mistaken Clinton for anything other than a centrist for a long time.)
Re: Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter
#77"The Obama administration often describes TPP as the most progressive free-trade deal in history" Does anyone see stronger government enforced monopolies (patents) as the opposite of free trade?
All property is a government enforced monopoly. Without property there is no trade. There is no reason to transact when you can just take or copy.
Re: Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter
#78Going by rank of the top 10 pharma companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pharmaceutical_compani... we can see that 4 are American and 6 are European.
The total revenue of that top 10 is 60% European companies and 40% American.
Now if this TTP chapter is two-way and with that equaly so for European markets then if anything would it not favour Europe more. Though between the two collectives involved. This only shuts out generics made outside of those two markets more than currently.
As for doctors without borders, they operate outside this trade agreement location wise and would not that open up for cheaper supplies from the producers outside this trade agreement. I would of thought so.
Though would perhaps, once settle reduce production runs of generics in some area's that depended upon this `sudo` gr[a¦e]y market. Then that may raise production costs, though if mroe than one generic then it would become more a price war without the more fruitful markets to utilise. Though always new markets and myself not sure about medical drugs and Russia and how that works at all.
But really such agreements need to be public before signing as about trade for the people as a whole and not a niche area that impacts national security of the people.
So the whole aspect not public just does not sit well, nor bode well for trust or indeed any scrutinising and that which has and has leaked. Just hard to get the full picture as hard to scale.
Re: Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter
#79The article missed some of the other giveaways to Big Pharma. One is a narrowing of the patent obviousness requirement for "me-too" drugs. Claritin (loratidine) is the classic example. Loratidine is a stereoisomer; there's a left handed and a right handed version of the molecule. One has an anti-allergy effect, and the other doesn't seem to do much. (That's very common; biology isn't symmetrical at the molecular level.)
When the patent ran out on Claritin, the manufacturer came out with Clarinex, which contains only the one isomer that does something useful. They then pitched doctors hard to switch their patients to Clarinex, with considerable success.
But the manufacturer lost a patent case, on the grounds that separating the isomers and only keeping the useful one is obvious to anyone skilled in the art.[1] Now that isomer separation is routine, although non-trivial, the FDA requires it as a purification step if the non-useful isomer has any negative effects.[2] You can't claim that a step required by existing regulation is a new invention.
There's a clause in the TPP IP section to reverse that decision.[3] "[US/JP propose; CL/MY/PE/SG/VN/BN/AU/NZ/CA/MX oppose: 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 from last year's draft on Wikileaks; I haven't seen the new draft yet.
Incidentally, the TPP resolves the issue of patentablity for software and business methods: "Subject to the provisions of paragraph 2 and 3 (which relate mostly to plant and animal patents), each Party shall make patents available for any invention, whether a product or process, in all fields of technology, provided that the invention is new, involves an inventive step, and is capable of industrial application." So software and business methods must be made patentable in all TPP-signatory countries. This, again, is from last year's draft. Check the new one once it gets published.
[1] http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/schering-plough-lose... [2] http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInforma... [3] https://wikileaks.org/tpp-ip2/
Re: Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the idea is "highest [regulatory] standard wins," I doubt the IP provisions of that new deal would be any more palatable to the folks here on HN than the TPP will be. The "behind closed doors" concern is mostly fake. "Secrecy" is a story line that tests well with folks who don't know how policy gets made in general. For example, the PPACA (aka Obamacare) and Dodd-Frank bills were extensively negotiated in private…
Warren was not a senator while the ACA was being drafted.
She is now, so the honorific is called for when people refer to her now.
Before running for office, she was a major contributor to the ideas in Dodd-Frank, and many of those meetings took place out of the public eye and before the public debate on the bill.
This is not to criticize that particular bill (or the ACA) or her role in drafting it. Just making the point that negotiating and drafting policy behind closed door is a totally standard and unremarkable first step in the process.