Intellectual property policies have existed for decades and in some instances for centuries. Until recently, however, they have been largely the domain of specialists, practitioners and producers of intellectual property rights (IPRs), and thus relatively insulated from the kind of debate common in most areas of public policy. IPRs are principally conceived as a tool to encourage innovation, but as firms perceive their intangible assets as crucial to the protection of their global competitiveness, their intellectual property (IP) interests have increasingly shifted towards stronger protection, to the detriment of any sustainable balance between private and societal interests.

It is against this background that the current debate on the enforcement of IPRs has emerged. Although the achievement of more effective IPR enforcement was already one of the main driving forces behind the conclusion of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), it increasingly appears that TRIPS – while being an important milestone – did not represent a conclusive and satisfactory response to what is perceived as a significant rise in levels of counterfeiting and piracy. In this context, recent years have witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of initiatives relating to enforcement of IPRs. Perhaps the most conspicuous and exposed attempt has been the proposed move towards the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

Introduction

The stalemate in the Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations has moved plurilateral agreements, as a means to advance trade liberalisation, to the centre stage of the trade policy agenda. Concrete proposals have been recently made, and initiatives launched, for the negotiation of plurilateral trade agreements in the areas of green goods and services. However, the reflection on plurilateral trade agreements seem to have been insufficiently informed by the experience of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

Yet, ACTA remains the only major plurilateral trade agreement which has been recently negotiated and concluded outside the WTO. It became the subject of a controversial debate. Ultimately, the refusal of the European Parliament, in June 2012, to give its consent compromised its future political viability.

At the WTO and WIPO, developing countries are sometimes perceived as standing in the way of reaching consensual outcomes and concluding new agreements. Yet the fatal blow to ACTA, an agreement mostly among industrialized countries, came primarily from domestic stakeholders in these countries. Against this background, ACTA negotiations offer valuable lessons for the design and negotiation of plurilateral trade agreements. The purpose of this chapter is to identify some of these lessons and to contribute to the broader discussion on plurilaterals in the WTO context.