Professor Douwe Korff, London Metropolitan University, and Ian Brown, Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, prominent fundamental rights experts, wrote an elaborate study on ACTA, they conclude ACTA violates fundamental rights. Their conclusions are rather devastating:
ACTA was negotiated in unwarranted secrecy, without adequate input from civil society or parliamentarians, but in close cooperation with major IP right holders. Not surprisingly, this resulted in a text that gives disproportionate protection to big business; fails to level the playing field between developed and developing nations in international trade relations; hampers innovation (especially by SMEs); fails to promote grassroots culture; and could impede the dissemination of knowledge for people across the world (and access to health care and generic medicines). Human rights were effective ignored, apart from the inclusion in the Agreement of vague and ineffective “without prejudice” clauses that fail to redress the balance, and are little more than fig-leaves. The inclusion of a detailed provision on the need to respect human rights in the protection of IPR, on the lines of the “138 Amendment” to Directive 2002/21/EC, was rejected as “not needed”.