Monday, October 12, 2015

TPP's IP Remedies Provisions

According to this leaked text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement's intellectual property provisions, and based on my very quick review, it doesn't appear that the agreement would impose any TRIPs-plus requirements relating to patent remedies.  But it would require member states to provide for either pre-established or "additional damages" (the latter may include "exemplary of punitive damages") for copyright and related rights infringement and for trademark counterfeiting.  It also would require members to provide criminal penalties for some forms of trade secret misappropriation, in addition to "willful trademark counterfeiting or copyright or related rights piracy on a commercial scale."

Among the more interesting substantive provisions are the requirement for a 1-year grace period for patent applicants and an extension of the copyright term (which I believe currently remains at life plus fifty in some of the affected countries, including Japan) to life plus seventy.

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