[IP] Obama Admin rules texts of new IPR agreement are state secrets

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Jim Warren <jwarren@well.com>
Date: March 12, 2009 7:56:45 PM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: fwd: [Random-bits] Obama Admin rules texts of new IPR  
agreement are state secrets

The government wants to protect monopolies of thought (e.g. drug  
patents, genetic patents, "business process" patents, algorithm  
patents, etc.), and how it wants to do it is a "state secret" (except,  
probably, from the would-be monopolists - Microsoft, Big Pharma, Dow  
Chemical, Big Agri-Biz, financial "innovators", etc.)!  --jim

At 5:15 PM -0400 3/12/09, James Love <james.love@keionline.org> posted  
to random-bits <Random-bits@lists.essential.org>:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-love/obama-administration-rule_b_174450.html

Obama Administration rules texts of new IPR agreement are state secrets
James Love

We have been seeking access to documents relating to negotiations on an
important new intellectual property enforcement treaty. The agreement,
misleadingly named the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, is
thought to cover a wide range of intellectual property enforcement
issues -- including standards for granting injunctions for alleged
infringement of patents or copyrights, damages, seizures of goods in
transit, surveillance of Internet digital file transfers, searches of
personal property, and a dozen other topics.

There are number of outstanding Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
requests for key documents, by groups like EFF, Public Knowledge, and
KEI. In one of our FOIA requests, we asked for 7 specific documents,
referenced by the exact title and date of the documents. These documents
are the proposals for the text of the agreement.

The texts are available to the Japanese government. They are available
to the 27 member states of the European Union. They are available to the
governments of Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia. They are
available to Morocco, and many other countries. They are available to
"cleared" advisers (mostly well connected lobbyists) for the
pharmaceutical, software, entertainment and publishing industries. But
they are a secret from you, the public.

Today we received this letter from the White House, Office of the United
States Trade Representative. Our FOIA request was denied on the grounds
that the documents are "information that is properly classified in the
interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958."

Here is a link to a PDF of the denial of the FOIA request.

http://www.keionline.org/misc-docs/3/ustr_foia_denial.pdf

...

--
James Love, Director, Knowledge Ecology International
http://www.keionline.org | mailto:james.love at keionline.org
Wk: +1.202.332.2671 | US Mobile +1.202.361.3040 | Geneva Mobile  
+41.76.413.6584




-------------------------------------------