EU Demands Canada Gut Its Copyright and Patent Laws

An anonymous reader writes "Late last year, a draft of the European Union proposal for the intellectual property chapter of Canada, EU Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement, leaked online. The leak revealed that the EU was seeking some significant changes to Canadian IP laws. Negotiations have continued and Michael Geist has now obtained an updated copy of the draft chapter, complete with proposals from both the EU and Canada. He says the breadth of the demands is stunning — the EU is demanding nothing less than a complete overhaul of Canadian IP laws including copyright, trademark, databases, patent, geographic indications, and even plant variety rights."

Comments

Re:51 st state?

[shutdown -p now]

It's okay, if what I've seen in BC and Ontario is anything to go buy, the rest of Canada would pay you guys to take Alberta in.

Now if they can also somehow ship Quebec off to France, I think it'll be all settled.

~

Re:Feh

[Reed Solomon]

corporations make money if the seal hunt remains?

really?

corporations?

hahahahahahahah.

The seal hunt has never been about profitability. Most seal hunters, while they hope to profit, are hardly corporations making tons of cash. For aboriginals and the atlantic sealers its a tradition and way of life.

Seals are hardly going extinct. And in fact high seal numbers might be threatening populations of less photogenic animals.

The real "corporations" are PETA and their ilk. They make the real money.

Re:Since when?

[GumphMaster]

It is, in the same way that Australia was treated as an extension of the USA during the "negotiation" of last "free" trade agreement between our nations. The result? Australia ended up with a DMCA-wannabe and extended copyright terms or lost other trade items. I particularly like the "Australia's IP laws will be substantially harmonised with the world’s largest intellectual property market, and a global leader in innovation and creative products." arse-kissing exercise. I'm sure that any Canada-EU equivalent will contain similar gems in English and French!

http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/negotiations/us_fta/outcomes/08_intellectual_property.html

Re:What the hell?

[pydev]

Exports from Canada to the EU are small, and imports from the EU to Canada are also economically insignificant; nearly 80% of Canada's exports go to the US.. The EU doesn't "need" Canada. But the EU could make life pretty unpleasant for Canadians in principle if it starts cancelling other agreements: travel, currency exchange, access to markets, landing rights, port privileges, etc. If Europe and Canada stop cooperating, Canada will degenerate into an appendage of the US even more so than it already is. For Europe, it would simply mean the loss of a fairly small trading partner. Big deal.

Dear World

[whisper_jeff]

Dear World,

As one of the few countries in the world whose economy is not absolutely sitting in the toilet, we, the People of Canada, would like to politely ask you all to fuck off, eh. We appreciate your opinions on our intellectual property laws but, given that we're not bordering on bankruptcy and/or forcing our people to live in a Nanny-state like the rest of you seem to be, we are forced to assume we must be doing something right while the rest of you aren't exactly laying down templates of "how it should be done."

We do apologize for the broad generalizations that may be made in this message but, really, the point remains - fuck off, eh. Mind your own damn business and we'll mind our own. We've done pretty well at minding our business and are just fine with things as they are. Thanks.

Sincerely and respectfully, Canada.

Re:Policy laundering

[moonbender]

The lock-in is the worst aspect by far. If the government has the majorities to ratify a treaty, fair enough, that's how government and legislation works. However, a few years later, majorities may shift and the former opposition is now the majority. But due to the way the treaty is designed, they might have a very difficult time repealing the treaty and its legislation. So the treaty effectively increases the length of a government's term of power. I guess there should be some constitutional limits to treaties above and beyond those for normal laws. (IANAL, so maybe those already exist in many countries.)

Re:Overestimating their power

[ais523]

I seem to remember (which means, I don't have a reliable source...) that last time there was a dispute between the EU and the US about trade tariffs, the EU went and put a relatively large (around 50%) tax on a whole list of implausible-seeming products. The only connection between them is that they were each important to the economy of a swing state in the (then-upcoming) US election; the EU was trying to put pressure on the incumbents to accede to their demands or be voted out by their own citizens. (I ran into this problem when trying to import some embedded microprocessors from the US to the UK; it was necessary to decide whether they were handheld computers without a calculator function (very low import duty rate), or handheld computers with a calculator function (much higher import duty rate). In the end, I think they qualified as non-calculators.)