EU Demands Canada Rework Its Copyright, Patent Law

An anonymous reader writes "The draft intellectual property text of the EU - Canada Trade Agreement has leaked, with news that the EU is demanding that Canada fundamentally alter copyright, patent, and trademark law. The laundry list of demands includes copyright term extension, WIPO ratification, DMCA-style legislation, resale rights, new enforcement provisions, and following patent, trademark, and design law treaties. The net result is that when combined with the ACTA requirements, Canadian copyright law may cease to be Canadian." Reader TheTurtlesMoves stresses the "first sale doctrine" aspect of the Canada - EU negotiations. Once an artist sells a creative work, should she get a cut of any future resales of that same work? The EU says yes at least for some types of works, and it wants Canada to see things its way. "Europe's Directive 2001/84/EC says that the right covers only 'works of graphic or plastic art such as pictures, collages, paintings, drawings, engravings, prints, lithographs, sculptures, tapestries, ceramics, glassware and photographs, provided they are made by the artist himself or are copies considered to be original works of art.'"

Comments

Cue the apologists...

[HarrySquatter]

Aren't we constantly told that the EU is so much better in regards to patents and copyrights and it's only the big bad US that is constantly trying to push all this stuff on people?

Disgusting...

[Synchis]

This type of news is disgusting to me as a Canadian.

Throughout the summer, Canada held an enormous copyright consultation in which large corporations expressed an interest in these types of changes, and artists, creators and citizens expressed an interest in the exact opposite direction to this.

Michael Geist usually carries all the latest news about this topic.

At the same time, I think we have nothing to worry about. In a country that shows a 30% voter turnout (at best), that makes 6.9 million voters. Historically, over 500000 canadians joined the protest against the last attempt to bring laws like this. Thats a 7% swing in the vote towards the party that will stand up against this type of law making. Thats enough to win an election in Canada.

With all this hype over copyright and trademark law, I expect it to be a hot topic in the next election, and with us running under a minority gov't, we could end up with an election at any time.