Official ACTA Text Released

A prepared-for-the-public version of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement under negotiation by leading economies has now been released online. The release comes after increased public and civil society outcry over a non-transparent negotiating process and fears that the treaty would lead to the introduction of stricter intellectual property enforcement laws in signatory countries.

The text can be read here [pdf].

Negotiators have eliminated the positions of different countries on areas of the text still under negotiation, though these were available in an earlier version of the text leaked in March (IPW, Enforcement, 29 March 2010).

The European Union Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said in a statement he was “glad that the EU convinced its partners to release the negotiation text” in a press release.

The Office of the United States Trade Representative said in a release that the negotiations had “now advanced to a point where making a draft text available to the public will help the process of reaching a final agreement.”

A month ago, complaints about ACTA and non-transparency featured in an unprecedented number of private citizen responses to an annual USTR review of intellectual property enforcement abroad (IPW, Enforcement, 5 March 2010).