Submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties on the Korea-Australia Free Trade Agreement (KAFTA)

mrABSTRACT:  Australia and South Korea have signed a new free trade agreement – the Korea-Australia Free Trade Agreement (KAFTA). Is it a fair trade fairytale? Or is it a dirty deal done dirt cheap? Or somewhere in between? It is hard to tell, given the initial secrecy of the negotiations, and the complexity of the texts of the agreement …

Recommendation 4: The intellectual property chapter of the Korea-Australia Free Trade Agreement 2014 is controversial. The proposed regime is one-sided and unbalanced. The intellectual property chapter is focused upon providing longer and stronger intellectual property rights for intellectual property owners. There is a failure to properly consider other public interest objectives – such as access to knowledge, the progress of science and the useful arts, and the promotion of innovation and competition.

Click here for the full submission.

Author

  • Matthew Rimmer

    Dr Matthew Rimmer is a Professor in Intellectual Property and Innovation Law at the Faculty of Law, at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). He is a leader of the QUT Intellectual Property and Innovation Law research program, and a member of the QUT Digital Media Research Centre (QUT DMRC) the QUT Australian Centre for Health Law Research (QUT ACHLR), and the QUT International Law and Global Governance Research Program (QUT IP IL). Rimmer has published widely on copyright law and information technology, patent law and biotechnology, access to medicines, plain packaging of tobacco products, intellectual property and climate change, and Indigenous Intellectual Property. He is currently working on research on intellectual property, the creative industries, and 3D printing; intellectual property and public health; and intellectual property and trade, looking at the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and the Trade in Services Agreement. His work is archived at QUT ePrints SSRN Abstracts Bepress Selected Works.

Share

Related posts