ACTA: Final Draft

On 15 November 2010, U.S. Participants in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations announced published the finalised text of the Agreement, after resolving the few issues that remained outstanding after the final round of negotiations in Tokyo.

Following legal verification of the drafting, the proposed agreement will then be ready to be submitted to the participants’ respective authorities to undertake relevant domestic processes.

Participants in the negotiations include Australia, Canada, the European Union (EU) and its Member States, represented by the European Commission and the EU Presidency (Belgium), Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States of America.

ACTA aims to establish a comprehensive international framework that will assist Parties to the agreement in their efforts to effectively combat the infringement of intellectual property rights, in particular the proliferation of counterfeiting and piracy, which undermines legitimate trade and the sustainable development of the world economy. It includes state-of-the-art provisions on the enforcement of intellectual property rights, including provisions on civil, criminal, border and digital environment enforcement measures, robust cooperation mechanisms among ACTA Parties to assist in their enforcement efforts, and establishment of best practices for effective IPR enforcement.

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) Draft of 15 November 2010