- The TPP will undermine US law, including Supreme Court decisions, despite BS assurances from its corporate architects.
In practice, this means state governments -- including things like research universities -- are able to infringe on patents in the public interest, claiming sovereign immunity in state courts against such claims. We've pointed out in the past how hypocritical it is that state universities frequently use such sovereign immunity claims to avoid lawsuits, while at the same time being some of the most aggressive patent trolls in going after others (with the University of California being a prime example). However, it is the law of the land and in the Constitution that sovereign immunity on things like patents cannot be abridged.
- The Prime Minister of New Zealand admits drug prices will rise under the TPP, despite the fact that Kiwis already are facing shortages of some medicine and high prices for others. Here's the AARP:
Specifically, AARP objects to intellectual property provisions in the draft TPP agreement that unduly restrict competition by delaying consumers’ access to lower-cost generic drugs. These anticompetitive provisions include extending brand drug patent protections through “evergreening” drug products that provide little to no new value and prolong high prescription drug costs for consumers, linking approval to market generic or biosimilar drugs to existing patents in a way that protects only brand drugs, and increasing data exclusivity periods for biologics that further delays access by other companies to develop generic versions of these extremely high-cost drugs. These provisions are all designed to ensure monopoly control by brand-name drug companies.
- Like You Expected Anything Else Dep't: The USTR is listening exclusively to corporate interests while shoving public interest groups aside.
Previously: The Right's Insane Distortions About Trade Agreement Secrecy.
And so, one by one, all the paranoid things that I've heard predicted throughout my life are, one by one, starting to come true.
ReplyDeleteBy an odd coincidence, today I watched Rockford Files during lunch. It was the second part of a double-wide episode (the backdoor pilot for Richie Brockelman, Private Eye) that had to do with the attempt to set up a world-wide database of everyone's private information. It ended with a warning that this sort of thing could easily happen for reals.
I'm willing to bet that when I saw that back in 1978, I said something like, "Oh, come on, that's not going to happen."
Now I'm re-thinking the whole tinfoil hat thing.