ACTA and Its Complex Politics

Written for a special issue on the politics of intellectual property, this article examines the country club approach the negotiating parties of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) embraced to establish new and higher international intellectual property enforcement standards. It points out that the agreement is flawed not only because it is a country club agreement but also because it is a bad country club agreement. The article then situates ACTA in the context of a recent trend of using bilateral, plurilateral and regional trade and investment agreements to circumvent the multilateral norm-setting process. It contends that this disturbing trend could upset the political dynamics in the current international intellectual property regime. The article concludes with a discussion of the multiple layers of complex politics behind the ACTA negotiations: international, domestic and global. It focuses on developments both within the new intellectual property enforcement club and without