CAA News Today

With the eighth round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement taking place this month in Chicago, experts in intellectual property and information policy from around the world have released a Washington Declaration on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest that challenges the dominant direction of the negotiations on intellectual property in the United States’ trade agreements. Those in support of the declaration can express support with an online signature.

The declaration was created through a consultative process with over 180 experts from thirty-five countries in six continents at the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest, which took place August 25–27, 2011, at the Washington College of Law at American University. Citing an “unprecedented expansion of the concentrated legal authority exercised by intellectual property rights holders” through recent trade agreements, the experts call for new efforts to “re-articulate the public interest dimension in intellectual property law and policy.”

Read more about the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement in the Chicago Tribune and at Intellectual Property Watch.