FTAA Treaty Threatens Innovation

The Importance of writes "IP Justice has published a white paper on the intellectual property aspects of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) treaty, which is an attempt to create a single free trade agreement for the Western Hemisphere. Read the press release. The analysis is pretty devastating. The proposed language of the agreement has a number of serious flaws, including (but certainly not limited to) enhanced criminal penalties, a super-DMCA provision, reduced scope for fair use, and database protection elements. The proposed treaty is supposed to be complete by January 2005 and go into effect December 2005. Now is not too early to let your representatives and others know what a bad idea the intellectual property elements of the treaty are."

Comments

Every treaty threatens innovation

[tizzyD]

Innovation depends upon the flexibility to create new responses to an environmental situation or need. Treaties that fix rules around the environmental conditions restrict those responses, and ergo, they restrict innovation. One might also argue that many of our laws restrict innovation--like immediate execution for DNA-proven rapists and murderers as a response to prison overcrowding--but hey, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.