The Pacific Solution: Australia and Negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA)

This article examines the negotiation of the intellectual property (IP) chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) which was made public by Wikileaks in November 2013. It suggests that the covert negotiation of the TPPA was anticipated by the confidential negotiation of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which were concluded in December 2010. ACTA involved negotiations between like-minded nations outside the international organizations typically concerned with IP, such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It is suggested that the features of selected negotiating parties, lack of transparency and which characterized ACTA, established a precedent which has been followed in the TPPA, with implications for the future style of the negotiation of international IP instruments.