European Parliament roundly rejects ACTA

Any chance that the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) had of becoming EU law ended yesterday when the European Parliament overwhelmingly rejected it in a plenary vote by 478 votes to 39, with 165 abstentions.

The overwhelming rejection of ACTA is a major defeat for the architects of ACTA, which has courted controversy throughout its development amid claims of excessive secrecy and an intellectual property rights (IPR) agenda that was weighted too much in the interests of copyright and trademark holders.

Parliament could have chosen a number of alternatives to outright rejection - including declining to vote on the treaty or referring it to the European Court of Justice - which would have kept ACTA alive in Europe for the time being.

Publishers and representatives of the music industry have reacted angrily to the decision, with the Federation of European Publishers (FEP) calling it a "missed opportunity for the EU to protect its creative and innovation-based industries in the international market place".

As it stands, the negative vote means that ACTA "is dead so far as the EU is concerned", according to a notice on the European Parliament's website.

In April, David Martin, the rapporteur for the International Trade Committee which steered the ACTA dossier though Parliament, recommended that the treaty be rejected because the "intended benefits of this international agreement are far outweighed by the potential threats to civil liberties".

Concerns have been voiced about the potential for individual consumers to become liable for criminal prosecution, Internet service providers liable for the actions of their customers and - potentially- interruptions in the legitimate trade in generic medicines.

On the latter point, the vote was welcomed by doctor's charity Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF), which said the treaty would have restricted access to generic medicines and given an "unfair advantage" to brand holders.

Specifically, MSF claimed that ACTA could lead to seizures of generic drugs and place organisations that distribute them - including MSF itself - open to punitive actions when providing them to patients in developing economies where patents on them had not been granted.

"ACTA was purported to protect against counterfeiting across a number of industries, including for medicines, where it was held up as a way of blocking potentially harmful 'counterfeit' medicines," said MSF in a statement.

However, ACTA's "overbroad definition of 'counterfeiting' and its excessive enforcement provisions left too much room for error", it added.

The rejection of ACTA comes hard on the heels of the adoption of new regulations on IPR in the EU that increase the powers of customs to seize counterfeit and pirated goods but which include a commitment to ensure that generic medicines are not delayed or confiscated at EU borders.

ACTA was negotiated between the EU and its Member States, the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Switzerland.

Ratification by six parties to the negotiations is sufficient for the agreement to come into force, with the EU counting as one party. The US, Australia, Canada and Japan signed up to ACTA last year.

“Europe could have seized the chance to support an important treaty that improved intellectual property standards internationally," commented Alan Drewson, executive director of the International Trademark Association (INTA).

"We expect that ACTA will move ahead without the EU, which is a significant loss for the 27 member states", he added.

Trade organisations representing branded pharmaceutical manufacturers also expressed their disappointment with the vote.

The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) said it "failed to understand the urgency of taking such a decision without waiting for the pending opinion of the Court of Justice of the EU since this rejection will have economic consequences for industrial sectors, workers and consumers in the EU".