ACTA is wrong way of protecting IP, says European Parliament
This article was originally published in Scrip
The full European Parliament, as expected, said no to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The 4 July 2012 vote means that the agreement cannot be ratified in the EU. ACTA was the wrong way to protect intellectual property, said Martin Schulz, president of the Parliament, after the vote.
In the plenary session, 478 MEPs voted against the agreement with only 39 in favour, and 165 abstentions. The abstentions came from a minority of MEPs in response to the rejection of a proposal by the European People's Party to postpone the vote until the European Court of Justice has judged whether ACTA is compatible with EU treaties.
ACTA has fuelled controversy from the beginning. Critics have slammed the lack of transparency after the European Commission, EU member states, US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Switzerland negotiated it behind closed doors. There was also alarm that vague language could lead to overzealous interpretations. For example, NGO Médecins Sans Frontières said that ACTA might enable customs officers to seize medicines in transit over trade mark disputes.
"The way it was written, ACTA would have given an unfair advantage to patented medicines, and restricted access to affordable generic medicines to the detriment of patients and treatment providers alike," said Aziz ur Rehman, intellectual property advisor for MSF's Access Campaign. ACTA's definition of counterfeiting was too broad, while "excessive" enforcement measures could pave the way for seizures of legitimate generics, he said.
The R&D-based pharmaceutical industry had supported the agreement. EFPIA claimed it was a step towards better anti-counterfeiting measures that would protect Europe's creators and innovators.
The biggest concern at the European Parliament, perhaps, was that ACTA would violate personal freedoms. The agreement's vague wording could lend itself to the interpretation that internet service providers would be responsible for policing internet users and making them comply with copyright laws, which could lead to invasions of privacy.
The European Parliament evidently paid attention to ACTA's opponents. "The majority in the European Parliament is of the opinion that ACTA is too vague, leaving room for abuses and raising concern about its impact on consumers' privacy and civil liberties, on innovation and the free flow of information," said Mr Schulz. Indeed, in a statement the parliament said that it had experienced "unprecedented direct lobbying" from thousands of EU citizens to reject the agreement. It pointed to demonstrations, emails and calls to MEPs and a petition with 2.8 million signatures from across the world.
However, Mr Shultz was keen to point out that the death of ACTA did not mean that Europe was unsupportive of intellectual property rights. "The vote against ACTA was not one against the protection of intellectual property. On the contrary - the European Parliament staunchly supports the fight against piracy and counterfeiting, which harm European companies and pose a threat to consumer health and European jobs."
But MEPS said that anti-counterfeiting measures should not come at the cost of individual freedoms. "We need to start again from scratch. We want to fight counterfeiting and we are willing to start working as soon as possible on a good solution," the MEP Bernd Lange, a spokesperson on international trade for the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.