There are so many leaks of "official" information these days It's hard to keep up, but I've just read what is apparently a paper submitted by New Zealand negotiators on the intellectual property aspects of the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement (PDF), negotiations for which kick off again today here in Auckland.

Wow!

Taking into account the rarefied and diplomatic language in which such papers are written, this is pretty explosive stuff.

The main takeouts suggest that the New Zealand negotiators:

As noted above, New Zealand considers that TRIPS provides a valuable and appropriate framework to achieve the horizontal outcomes, including the development of a platform for a future region-wide FTA. Our analysis also suggests that we should be cautious about moving beyond TRIPS standards, given the differing levels of economic development and the apparent lack of evidence of whether stronger intellectual property protection has increased innovation, particularly in developing countries.

Rick Shera - New Zealand ICT, intellectual property & internet lawyer; start-up adviser; chair of NetSafe.org.nz and Hectorsworld.com (cybercitizenship NFPs); keen skier when has time - http://bit.ly/VCX3J

Just because you read this (and thanks for visiting by the way), doesn't mean you are my client. Nothing here constitutes legal advice in any jurisdiction. You generally have to pay for that ;-)