ACTA – analysis of an emerging IPR enforcement regime

Abstract: The thesis scrutinizes and analyses ACTA, a recently finished international agreement on enforcement of intellectual property rights. The analysis is performed on both a micro and a macro level. On the micro level, the analysis concerns the substantive content and the incentives to enhance the protection on the level of individual provisions. The scope and the title of the agreement is dealt with separately. On the macro level the broader political incentives and the forms of the negotiations are analysed. Particular attention is devoted to the approach and the role of the EU within the negotiations. On the macro level, the thesis identifies ACTA as a challenge to the existing regimes in the IPR field, partly by the mere creation of a new institution, and partly by the lack of transparency imbuing the negotiations. It is possible to envisage ACTA as a logical step in a longstanding process of reinforcement of the international IPR protection, implemented through multilateral and bilateral agreements, emanating from a growing frustration with the lack of progress within WIPO and WTO. On the micro level, the thesis shows that the title of ACTA is misleading and that many of the enforcement provisions go further than existing IPR regimes (particularly in TRIPS), but that the content still is much less controversial today than in earlier stages of the negotiations, due to the fact that the EU and the US, being the strongest parties in the negotiations, have had disparate opinions on several issues. Finally, the thesis outlines developments which may render the agreement to be less useful than the parties intended it to be, as well as ideas on how international agreements in the IPR field can be made easier to manage. The possibility to see ACTA as a start of a growing readiness to break international practice on law making, as a result of a number of failed negotiations in other fields, is specifically highlighted.