HOW COPYRIGHT PROVISIONS OF TRIPS AND ACTA CAN AFFECT A DEVELOPING COUNTRY LIKE PAKISTAN?

Saima Afzal

Abstract

Stringent provisions and too strict application of TRIPs and ACTA has twofold legal consequences for developing countries like Pakistan. On one hand, these developing countries are required to overhaul their domestic laws to conform to the international treaties and on the other hand they fear that stand to lose at least initially in this world of integrated economies due to curbs on counterfeit goods, which can lead to limiting the technology transfer from the developed to the developing countries. There has been so much attention to the issues of patents leading to limiting the technology transfer; access to medicine; safeguarding the agriculture sector and the biodiversity, that the Copyright provisions which have serious implications for developing countries have eclipsed. Developing countries, which are not only disadvantaged in technology but have very low levels of literacy, stand to lose due to harsh Copyright provisions. The problem of Geographic Indications (GIs) is no less significant, and the manufacturers and growers of these GI specified products are the underprivileged artisans and farmers of meager resources whose not just commercial interests are jeopardized but livelihoods too, due to scant vigilance of their own governments. The human rights aspect of these provisions is hard to be ignored that how they can be an on onslaught on the human rights of those affected.