More than 100 advocacy groups from around the world are asking officials from countries negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement to immediately publish the draft text of the document. The concern is that undisclosed provisions will undermine access to low-cost generics, among other things, such as require Internet service providers to monitor all consumer Internet communications.

“The lack of transparency in negotiations of an agreement that will affect the fundamental rights of citizens of the world is fundamentally undemocratic,” the groups wrote in their letter. “It is made worse by the public perception that lobbyists from the music, film, software, video games, luxury goods and pharmaceutical industries have had ready access to the ACTA text and pre-text discussion documents through long-standing communication channels.”

In explaining such concerns, Robert Weissman of Essential Action, cites PhRMA’s recommendations last March to the US Trade Representative concerning the ACTA:

“To address the supply of bulk chemicals and other materials used to produce and market counterfeit medical products, ACTA should require members to recognize as an administrative and criminal offense the manufacture, transport, distribution, importation and exportation of any equipment, materials, components or documentation used in the production or distribution of counterfeit medical products, consistent with the WHO guidelines specified above.”

“If there is a system that imposes liability on an active pharmaceutical ingredient maker if they sell to a ‘counterfeiter,’ then there is going to be a major burden on the API maker to verify the validity of the manufacturers to whom they sell. You’re definitely in the clear if you’re an API maker in China and you sell to Pfizer the ingredients to make Viagra. But are you going to track down the generic maker in Ecuador and validate their operations?”

He also maintains that the pharmaceutical industry is trying to use ACTA as a way to prevent parallel
trade/reimportation, and notes PhRMA’s submission to the US Trade Rep also says: “ACTA members should also be required to prohibit the distribution of medical products diverted from legitimate distribution channels and such distribution of diverted products should be treated as a counterfeiting
offense.”

The countries negotiating ACTA include the US, the European Union, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand. And the groups seeking disclosure of the text include Consumers Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Essential Action, IP Justice, Knowledge Ecology
International, Public Knowledge, Global Trade Watch, US Public Interest Research Group, IP Left (Korea), Australian Digital Alliance, The Canadian Library Association, Consumers Union of Japan, National Consumer Council (UK) and Doctors without Borders.