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President-Elect Donald Trump has announced that he will withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement on his first day in office. So ends more than five years of often heated negotiations led by President Barack Obama\u2019s administration as part of an overall strategy to strengthen the US position in the Pacific Rim region.<\/p>\n
As in any international trade agreement, intellectual property rights<\/a> (IPR) were a central theme in the TPP. After all, IPRs are granted and enforced at the national level. International trade in knowledge products can only be promoted if there is IPR coordination across the countries entering into the agreement.<\/p>\n IPR issues were negotiated passionately during the drafting of the agreement and were the subject of some of the loudest opposition to the TPP. Although the TPP agreement itself is under the gun, the IPR issues raised and contested will continue to play a prominent role in the bilateral or multilateral trade agreements that will be negotiated in its place.<\/p>\n Who<\/strong>: 12 Pacific Rim countries (in alphabetical order): Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, USA, Vietnam. Note the conspicuous absence of China.<\/p>\n What<\/strong>: A mega-regional trade agreement that removes or reduces tariff barriers and harmonizes key commercial practices in order to promote a free yet safe flow of goods among the member countries.<\/p>\n When and Where<\/strong>: After five years of highly secretive negotiations, the TPP was finalized in Atlanta, Georgia on October 5, 2015 and signed on February 4, 2016 in Auckland, New Zealand \u2013 subject to ratification by the signatory countries within 24 months.<\/p>\n Why<\/strong>: According to the Office of the United States Trade Representative<\/a> (USTR), the TPP is meant to \u201cpromote economic growth; support the creation and retention of jobs; enhance innovation, productivity and competitiveness; raise living standards; reduce poverty in our countries; and promote transparency, good governance, and enhanced labor and environmental protections.\u201d<\/p>\n In general, the IPR-related TPP clauses<\/a> are based on existing international IPR standards such as TRIPS (WTO agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights), WIPO and PCT. However, the US negotiators in particular were seeking to significantly<\/strong> strengthen<\/strong> and broaden<\/strong> the protection for patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets \u2013 including rights on digital media and pharmaceutical products. While not all of the US provisions were accepted, former World Bank Director of Economic Policy and Debt Carlos Braga<\/a> provides an excellent summary of the noteworthy measures that did make it into the agreement:<\/p>\n As noted above, TPP granted 5 to 8 years of test data protection for pharmaceutical products. This clause was one of the most hotly contested issues during the TPP negotiations and, when publicized, aroused tremendous criticism from both the US pharma industry and from medical rights activists.<\/p>\n The US grants 12 years of test data exclusivity to pharmaceutical products and the US negotiators wanted the TPP negotiating partners to align themselves with this policy. In Atlanta, however, they had to compromise on the shorter term or the agreement would not have been finalized.<\/p>\n BIO President and CEO Jim Greenwood spoke for the industry when he stated<\/a> “\u2026 we believe the failure of our Asian-Pacific partners to agree to a similar length of protection [as the US] is remarkably short-sighted and has the potential to chill global investment and slow development of new breakthrough treatments for suffering patients.”<\/p>\n On the other hand, organizations such as Doctors without Borders (MSF) and Public Citizen were disappointed that exclusivity was set at as high as 8 years and not clearly limited to 5. According to the MSF \u201cThe big losers in the TPP are patients and treatment providers in developing countries\u2026 [T]he TPP will\u2026go down in history as the worst trade agreement for access to medicines in developing countries, which will be forced to change their laws to incorporate abusive intellectual property protections for pharmaceutical companies.”<\/p>\n Among the first to object to the TPP IPR measures when they were finally made public were the freedom of information and freedom of the Internet advocacy groups. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation<\/a>, the digital IPR policies outlined in the TPP benefit the big corporations at the expense of the public, with extensive negative impact on freedom of expression, right to privacy and due process.<\/p>\n Another such advocacy group, Fight for the Future<\/a>, released a statement that the TPP\u2019s extended copyright protection would \u201ckeep an enormous amount of information, art, and creativity out of the public domain for decades longer than necessary, and allow for governments to abuse copyright laws to censor online content at will, since so much of it will be copyrighted for so long.\u201d<\/p>\n Other critics expressed concern that the TPP clauses that strengthened patent rights could stifle innovation in general and have a negative effect in the pharma industry in particular. IP Watch<\/a>, for example, points out the following:<\/p>\nFirst of all, the 5Ws of the TPP<\/h2>\n
The TPP IP innovations<\/h2>\n
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The test data exclusivity debate<\/h2>\n
Are individual and public interest rights being trampled?<\/h2>\n
Unfair strengthening of pharma patent rights?<\/h2>\n
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The TPP strengthened the US IPR agenda<\/h2>\n