The Intellectual Property Rights Alliance just published its 2010 report reviewing countries’ rankings on various indexes measuring their respect for property rights. The aim of the report was to show the clear link between a country’s respect for property rights and economic prosperity.
According to the report, the link can be seen in all forms of property including intellectual property. Dealing with the latter, the report states:
Yesterday, the International Intellectual Property Alliance released its 2010 SPECIAL 301 REPORT ON COPYRIGHT ENFORCEMENT AND PROTECTION. The report notes that “its statement in the 2007 Special 301 report – submitted three years ago – remains, disappointingly, true today: “Canada remains far behind virtually all its peers in the industrialized world with respect to its efforts to bring its copyright laws up to date with the realities of the global digital networked environment. Indeed, even most of the major developing countries have progressed further and faster than Canada in meeting this challenge.”
Last week was another busy week for developments in ACTA. There were meetings in Mexico by representatives from Canada and its key trading partners to further flesh out how to address the worldwide problems with counterfeiting and piracy. Meanwhile, anti-copyright critics were busy filling the blogosphere and press attacking the proposed treaty.
Of course, the actual text of the treaty is not know by the public. So commentators have relied on their interpretations of leaked documents to try and derail it.
When the criticisms are examined, it will be readily apparent that certain ACTA critics misapprehend what has been disclosed and make assertions or reach conclusions that cannot be justified based on the leaked documents.
Here is a copy of my slides presented at the 14th Annual Law Society of Upper Canada Intellectual Property Law – The Year in Review conference. It covers the leading Canadian and international copyright cases for the 2009 year. It excludes decisions of the Copyright Board. These cases were dealt with by Mario Bouchard of the Copyright Board of Canada.
On November 20th, the OECD published a report titled Magnitude of counterfeiting and piracy of tangible products – November 2009 update. The report is an update to a previous major study on counterfeiting undertaken by the OECD in 2008. The report confirms what has been known for a long time: that counterfeiting and piracy of tangible goods is a major impediment to global trade that is getting worse. The report estimates that global trade in counterfeit and pirated tangible goods more than doubled in this decade to approximately 250 billion US dollars in 2007, up from just over USD 100 billion in 2001.
On November 19, leading American entities representing the creative industries including representatives of authors, publishers, directors, artists, photographers, and distributors wrote to Chairman Patrick Leahy, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee as well as to ranking members of various Senate and House Committees to express their strong support for ACTA.
The letter summarizes some of the reasons why ACTA is important. Here are some extracts from the letter, which are equally applicable to Canada:
The OECD just published an update on the magniture of counterfeiting and piracy of tangible products. The report, Magnitude of Counterfeiting and Piracy of Tangible Products-An Update, is a useful reminder of the problem and reinforces the need for a global agreement like ACTA to address the problem.
An 2008 OECD study concluded that international trade in counterfeit and pirated goods could have accounted for up to USD 200 billion in 2005. The updated estimates, based on the growth and changing composition of trade between 2005 and 2007, suggests that counterfeit and pirated goods in international trade grew steadily over the period 2000 – 2007 and could amount to up to USD 250 billion in 2007.
Last week saw a lot of digital ink spilled over speculation about what the Internet Chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is going to contain. Some opponents of ACTA including Prof. Geist helped to leak the contents of a two page confidential memorandum that contained a written account of an oral report on what was still being negotiated.[i]
Based on this two page preliminary document, ACTA opponents began a frenzied propaganda campaign against ACTA. Prof. Geist led the feverish attack writing articles, blogs, tweets, giving a speech in Washington, and press and radio interviews.[ii]
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