Law Commons^™

Acta - Risks Of Third-Party Enforcement For Access To Medicines, Brook Baker

Brook K. Baker

In its current near-final draft form, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement [ACTA] being negotiated plurilaterally—and largely secretly—by a self-selected group of countries proposes to allow preliminary and final injunctive relief against third parties (third-party enforcement) to prevent infringement of intellectual property rights and/or to prevent infringing goods from entering into the channels of commerce. There is lingering uncertainty whether the relevant civil enforcement section will apply to the entire range of intellectual property rights or whether patents will be excluded. If patents are excluded, the dangers in ACTA would be reduced but not eliminated—new globalized forms of third-party enforcement would still …