WIPR survey: Trump’s plan to scrap TPP is bad for IP owners
Readers answering the latest WIPR survey have agreed that President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal is likely to be bad for intellectual property owners in the signatory countries.
On November 21, Trump announced that the US would withdraw from the TPP on his first day in the White House.
The TPP deal covers 12 nations—Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the US and Vietnam.
A final agreement of the deal was reached in October last year, but it has not yet been ratified by the countries.
The IP chapter, number 18 of 30, contains several provisions including a requirement for each participating nation to provide a copyright protection term of ‘life plus 70 years’.
Trump said that the deal was a “potential disaster” for the country and that instead the US would negotiate “fair, bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back onto American shores”.
Responding to WIPR’s latest survey, 76% of readers agreed that the US leaving the TPP would be bad for IP owners in the signatory countries.
The question evoked a number of interesting and varied responses from respondents.
One said: “If Trump is for it, I am against it.”
Another reader added: “The established rules regarding IP rights, including copyright and pipeline patents in the TPP, were ground-breaking in some jurisdictions, such as in Mexico. So the lack of TPP will be a slowdown in the modernisation of legislations and lack of protection in some cases.”
Another said that “additional IP protections baked into TPP would have bolstered IP protection for signatory countries”.
Some readers had other views on the decision.
One said: “The TPP is massively beneficial for business and IP owners in the smaller signatory countries. I see Trump’s point of view where the US is perhaps not benefitting as much as other countries.”
Another added: “It’s neither bad nor good. The bigger problem is Trump in the White House.”
One reader felt that the move would be positive for IP owners.
They said: “The IP provisions in the TPP are primarily directed to making the systems in other signatory countries more like the US. Given that a number of bilateral agreements already achieve this, the benefits to US IP owners are minimal, whereas there is little or no benefit to IP owners in other signatory countries.
“For the most part, signatories traded off IP provisions to obtain benefits in other areas, such as improved access to US markets,” they added.
For this week’s survey question, we ask: “The UK government announced last week that it intends to ratify the Unified Patent Court Agreement, despite Britain’s decision to leave the EU. Do you welcome this decision?”
