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The eighth round of negotiations towards the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is being held in Wellington this week. Public concern about the agreement has mainly focused on the invasion of privacy from proposed text that would force internet service providers to release information about suspected copyright infringers without a warrant; several organisations including the Open Source Society and and the Creative Freedom Foundation have launched a website and last week organised a public forum on the issue. More recently aid and development organisation Oxfam has warned that new rules for patents and trademarks are likely to include measures to block generic medicines from reaching poor people in developing countries.
“The ability for people living in extreme poverty to access lifesaving medicines must be more important than protecting profits for the world’s biggest entertainment and pharmaceutical companies,” said Oxfam New Zealand’s Executive Director, Barry Coates. Oxfam is calling for greater transparency in the ACTA negotiations, asking the government to release the negotiating text for broader public scrutiny, and make a commitment to exclude patents. Since 2008, customs officials in the European Union have seized over 18 shipments of legal generic medicines from India and China to developing countries, including medicines to treat HIV and AIDS. Under ACTA, this could occur all over the world.
Even New Zealanders could be at risk of losing access to medicines, Pharmac, the public health institution which bulk buys medicines to keep prescription costs down, is a recuring issue with New Zealands' trade negotiations, particularly with the United States. When Prime Minister John Key met US vice president Joe Biden to discuss free trade last week he told TVNZ "There's always going to be a number of contentious areas and I have no doubt that Pharmac is one of those areas where there will be a discussion about access by US pharmaceutical companies to the New Zealand market or greater access”. He went on to say "It's not something we are looking at getting rid of." Making the ACTA negotiations public would provide some real reassurance that this is the case.
