The eleventh round of negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement kicked off last Thursday in Melbourne, with delegates from nine countries recommencing discussions on an ambitious, comprehensive trade agreement for the Asia-Pacific region.

On Friday 2 March, the ADA and ALCC co-hosted a private lunch for the IP negotiators alongside non-profit NZ advocacy group, NZRise, with presentations from four prominent copyright and economics experts. Speakers included ADA patron and CEO of Lateral Economics, Nicholas Gruen, Carolyn Dalton, Executive Director of Policy Australia, Vikram Kumar, Chief Executive, Internet NZ and Counsel for the Computer & Communications Industry Association, Jonathan Band.  Podcasts of the presentation and powerpoint slides will be made available online shortly.

Every IP negotiator and adviser involved in the negotiations attended the lunch, with comments from other stakeholders indicating that this was unusual for stakeholder events held over the previous ten rounds of the TPP. Feedback from IP negotiators and stakeholders following the lunch has been very positive, with negotiators commenting on the usefulness of the presentations. We’re hopeful that points made during the lunch were carried over into the afternoon’s negotiations, which is the ultimate goal of these events.

On Sunday 4th March, I appeared on a panel session with Krista Cox, Knowledge Ecology International, and Brett Smith, Free Software Foundation, commenting on aspects of the TPP that could restrict access to knowledge in and between the nine negotiating countries. My presentation focussed on the experiences of libraries and universities in Australia under the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, particularly with regard to the restrictive circumvention of technological protection measures provisions, parallel importation restrictions and the impact of a further extension of the copyright term. You can read the full presentation here.