The agreement aims to increase protection against counterfeiting and IP infringement by creating a new international legal framework outside of existing bodies.
ACTA includes 37 countries from around the world, including all 27 European Union members, as represented by the European Commission and EU Presidency, the United States of America, Australia, Canada, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and Switzerland.
Work on the agreement first began in 2006, with official negations starting in 2008. It faced some difficulty over the years, including fears that it may facilitate privacy violations.
A joint statement on the European Commission website said: “ACTA aims to establish a comprehensive international framework that will assist Parties to the agreement in their efforts to effectively combat the infringement of intellectual property rights, in particular the proliferation of counterfeiting and piracy, which undermines legitimate trade and the sustainable development of the world economy.
“It includes state-of-the-art provisions on the enforcement of intellectual property rights, including provisions on civil, criminal, border and digital environment enforcement measures, robust cooperation mechanisms among ACTA Parties to assist in their enforcement efforts, and establishment of best practices for effective IPR enforcement.”
Australia’s Trade Minister Craig Emerson commented on the agreement, saying it would be useful for protecting Australian brands.
“Australia already has rigorous enforcement standards – we want to see those same high standards adopted by other countries for the benefit of our knowledge-intensive exporters,” he said.
“There are many countries where intellectual property enforcement standards could be improved.
“Progress on the ACTA also sends a positive signal on the outlook for trade cooperation at the multilateral level.”
The full finalized agreement can be found online here.