The EU says no to ACTA: to protect public health, other countries should also reject it

Posted by Leila Bodeux on Jul 12th, 2012 in Access to medicines | Global Health Check

The European Parliament (EP) made a landmark decision to reject the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), by a majority of 478 votes out of 682.  The Agreement was negotiated between the EU, United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea….. ACTA is dangerous because it is not strictly limited to countering trade in true “counterfeiting”, defined narrowly under the WTO TRIPS Agreement as the “deliberate, fraudulent use of a trademark in order to deceive consumers”. Instead, ACTA creates severe penalties in connection with a range of types of IP infringement and IPR disputes, most of which have nothing to do with counterfeiting. For instance,…. read more