Brazil will not comply with ACTA

The Brazilian government has announced that it will not recognize or comply with agreements on intellectual property reached outside the framework of multilateral institutions, such as the World Trade Organization or the World Intellectual Property Organization. The announcement was aimed directly at the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which some thirty nations have been negotiating behind closed doors, led by the United States and the European Union, since 2007.

The emphasis in the ACTA document (which is still being discussed) is intellectual property rights enforcement.
“Nobody can stop a country from negotiating things. But what they decide does not mean a thing to us,” declared Carlos Marcio Cozendey, director of the Economic Department at the Foreign Ministry. However, Brazil could have problems with the new rules.

In fact, in 2008, a shipment of medicine from India on its way to Brazil was impounded in Holland when customs authorities there claimed the drugs, which India and Brazil considered generic, infringed patent rights of the pharmaceutical giant Merck. “What they are trying to do is make their domestic legislation international law,” said Cozendey. “That is not a legitimate way to establish international standards.”