한미 FTA 저지 지적재산권 분야 대책위원회

Stop KORUS FTA ! Poisonous articles on Intellectual Property chapter

1. Shutting down Internet sites that permit the unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or transmission of copyright works, is it declaring surrender to the pressure from the U.S.?

2. Strengthening enforcement on Intellectual Property Rights, are they trying to damage the order of constitution and make the government and the judicial division slaves of the right-holders?

3. The Korea-US FTA Intellectual Property chapter failed to reflect the principle of the intellectual property being the balance between right-holders and users and failed to establish an independent and democratic intellectual property policy.

 
After the full text of the Korea-US FTA became public, unreleased poisonous articles are getting revealed. We find that they include many articles that the government did not open to public right after the agreement was made even in relation to the intellectual property chapter. It is hard to believe that the intellectual property agreement process was to accept requests from the U.S. unilaterally and the side letter even includes several obligations only for South Korea. It is nothing but a surrender declaration to pressure from the U.S.

Also the agreement includes that not only strengthening higher level of legal protection than international standards and other FTA the U.S. made with other countries already but also allowing excessive executive and legal measures to be used to protect the right. Furthermore, Korea-US FTA allows overruling rights against Korean constitutions and legal policies.

Although the principle of Intellectual Property regime is the balance between the protection of rights and the use hence the government and the judicial division should try to establish this balance as public sectors, this agreement makes them as slaves for the right-holder and multi-national entertainment company as well. Are the right-holders really untouchable beings whom even the public sectors have to serve? It is inappropriate to utilize the administrative power and tax in biased way for the benefit of one party even when the disputes over intellectual property are basically disputes between private sectors and there are administrative and legal procedures to protect rights in place already. However, the agreement does not give any considerations over protections or rights of the users, that is to say, “fair use” which are being threatened.

 The poisonous articles revealed after the text of agreement became public are below.

Shutting down internet sites

U.S. government pushed Korea to drop new drug policy
Written by Heeseob Nam (hurips@gmail.com)
July 21, 2006

Alexander Vershbow, U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, visited Korean Ministry of Public Health on July 19 and had a meeting with Korean Minister (Mr. Yoo). On July 18, Mr. Vershbow requested the meeting and the purposes of his visit are to deliver U.S. government’s concerns on the drug pricing policy of Korean government. On May, the Korean government announced to reform its drug pricing policy of the national healthcare system by adopting measures to positively list reimbursable prescription drugs rather than the current “negative list”, which only lists the exclusions. During the second round of the KORUS FTA, the US negotiators expressed its strong opposition to the positive list system and refused to attend the Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Working Group meeting.

- What the Korean government should take away from the crippled talks of 2nd round is not to withdraw certain negotiating teams but to stop the negotiation itself -