Reports surfaced this month taking a somewhat accusatory tone against the United States and its alleged tactics for getting other countries to enact copyright legislation similar to its own. Tico Times, a leading weekly paper in Costa Rica reported on January 15, 2010 that the United States is delaying market access to Costa Rican sugar producers until the country's legislators approve the 14th Amendment to the Central America Free Trade Agreement ("CAFTA"), which covers copyright law.
Initially, Costa Rica was the only signatory that did not ratify CAFTA due to strong opposition in the country from various groups, including farmers, students, and trade unions. The legislation was partially pushed through in October 2007, with the section covering several provisions related to intellectual property, Amendment 14, left out and never officially signed into law. Similar to other TRIPS-plus agreements, the provisions go beyond what is required under International agreements. For example, the Agreement requires that member countries develop a uniform domain name dispute resolution policy to assist in settling domain disputes, provide copyright protection for the life of the author plus 70 years, enact provisions on anti-circumvention, under which member countries must prohibit tampering with technology used to protect copyrighted works, and provide for civil and criminal liability.
The country originally faced a December 31, 2009 deadline to approve the controversial portion, but discussions have been delayed, sources cite, due to the Costa Rica's extensive government process and political disagreement. Sources in Costa Rica note that there are currently 121 motions related to the law that need approval. For each motion, there must be a vote in the Commission and up to 45 minutes of debate on the floor of the assembly must be allowed. Moreover, Costa Rica is currently in the middle of a presidential election and Parliament is unlikely to convene before its completion.
Adding to the administrative barriers is the lack of support for the provisions within the region. Costa Rican papers are reporting that the prospect of the copyright provisions being passed is setting off protests by students who are concerned about the effect of proposed changes on their education by way of altering current study and research practices. Health officials in the region are also expressing disdain for the proposed provisions, claiming that they will "bankrupt the public health system" by making it impossible to develop generic low-cost versions of pharmaceuticals without being in contravention of the trademark and patent provisions in the Act.
Currently, a reported 11,880 metric tons of sugar which were ready for export to the United States are on hold, unable to be sold. While this plays well into a powerful-country-threatens-small-lesser-developed-country story, the US Embassy has denied that failure to enact copyright reform is a cause for the delay. Rather, the US indicated that the delay is simply a matter of the fact that the country has already met its allocated sugar export quotas, which were set back in September. The quotas are designed to protect local producers, and to allow countries to export a specified quantity of a product to the US at a low tariff, while subjecting all imports above the pre-determined threshold to a higher tariff.
Costa Rica isn't the only region which the US is accused of bullying into copyright reform. The United States has also received some heat from the Bahamas. According to local reports, the country recently proposed IP enforcement reforms after alleged pressure from the United States Trade Representative, who was reported to have accused the Bahamas of being "lax" in enforcing intellectual property laws. The Chamber of Commerce President has since taken steps to strengthen the country's enforcement regime, but has also placed some of the blame back on the US, arguing that 90-95% of the counterfeit products sold in the Bahamas come from the United States.
Vol. 53, June 2010