Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP) – 2015

Session teaser

Intellectual Property Rights' Section of TTIP

Session description

The ongoing negotiations on TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership of 11 countries) and TTIP (Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between US and the EU) include chapters on intellectual property rights that raise concerns among different groups of civil society, such as IT innovators, consumer groups, health and patient-rights associations, legal specialists. The concern is that the “Copyright Industry” has successfully inserted its well-known demands into the US position and will thus affect the right of countries to regulate in the interest of the whole of society, not just big companies. The IPR chapter of TTIP is still unknown, but the leaked chapter in TPP seems to confirm these fears. IT startups and user’s organizations have pointed out that the principle of ”fair use” has been put at risk They warn that the wording shows no effort to strike a balance between trade interests and the right to spread knowledge, to express one’s self, to develop new ideas. On the contrary, they see an attempt to restrict the Internet, criminalize whistleblowing on corporate wrongdoings “by means of a computer”. The new rules impose upon ISPs the duty to oversee their user’s activities, and to take down content over a mere allegation of infringement. This policing function is especially onerous for small start-up companies. The TPP Investment Chapter contains text that would enable corporations to sue nations over rules that allegedly harm expected future profits. Companies could use private trade tribunals to impose interpretations of “fair use”, “net neutrality” and the free and open access to information as violations of their profit rights and expectations. “Fair use” means e.g. quoting parts of a text, music or video without the need of permission of or payment to the rights-holder for purposes like commentary, criticism, news reporting, teaching, research, or even artistic parody. All these forms of communication may be labeled “piracy” through a stretch of definition. There are attempts to use trade negotiations to prolong author’s rights up to 75 years and corporate rights on artistic work up to 120 years (e.g. the Mickey Mouse character). Defenders of patient’s rights also are concerned with the attempts of Big Pharma to restrict the rights of nations to regulate patent rights in the public interest and hide the results of medical testing. This could lift the price of important life-saving drugs beyond the reach of low and middle income people. All this brings back the debate, whether exclusive rights on knowledge can really be treated as a classical property relation, such as ownership of a car or bag of potatoes. Critics argue that IPR are simply a temporary monopoly, granted by the state with the aim of stimulating inventions and creativity through guaranteeing profits. If the scope, quality and length of such monopolies are extended beyond reasonable limits, they start to have exactly the reverse effect – distorting markets and competition, stifling the motive to innovate and invest, evoking rentier behavior and corruption, and instituting a sort of private tax upon the citizens.

Keywords

TTIP negotiations, IPR, debates

Further reading

http://solidbul.eu/?cat=758

People

Plamena Popova

Chavdar Naidenov (Solidarna Bulgaria)

Session twitter hashtag

Hashtag: #eurodigf4