Introduction
ACTA has been a failure, not only from the perspective of international policy but also from the perspective of intellectual property rights protection. Although the European Court of Justice has not ruled on whether the agreement goes beyond the acquis communautaire and, therefore, infringes on EU legislation, the amount of criticism it has sparked seems to make it impossible to save a treaty that faces so many obstacles.
Some of the obstacles were created by ACTA’s very promoters, who failed to respond adequately to parliamentarians’ and NGOs’ criticisms regarding the lack of transparency of the negotiating process. Other obstacles, however, were created by opinion makers who succeeded in misinforming and manipulating civil society organisations, and public opinion more generally, making them believe that ACTA was a threat to fundamental rights and civil liberties, something that is certainly not true. The campaign against ACTA should be seen in the context of a global effort by interested parties to depict IPRs as contrary to rights of freedom of expression and to privacy.
As matters stand, the treaty has been signed by the United States, Australia, Canada, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Morocco, Singapore and Mexico, plus the European Union and twenty-two of its twenty-seven members; however, so far it has been ratii ed only by Japan, and rejected by the European Parliament.