No Virginia, Trade Deals Do Not Require Draconian IP Restrictions

Case in point, Canada and South Korea, who signed a free trade agreement without an all encompassing over-broad IP regime:

Canada and South Korea announced agreement on a comprehensive trade agreement earlier today. The focus is understandably on tariff issues, but the agreement also contains a full chapter on intellectual property (note that the governments have only released summaries of the agreement, not the full text, which is still being drafted). The IP chapter is significant for what it does not include. Unlike many other trade deals - particularly those involving the U.S., European Union, and Australia - the Canada-South Korea deal is content to leave domestic intellectual property rules largely untouched. The approach is to reaffirm the importance of intellectual property and ensure that both countries meet their international obligations, but not to use trade agreements as a backdoor mechanism to increase IP protections.
Yesterday I noted that Canada might be asked to increase the term of copyright protection given that South Korea had agreed to longer copyright terms in its recent agreements with the European Union, Australia, and the U.S. In fact, the U.S. agreement contains extensive additional side letters on Internet provider liability, enforcement, and online piracy.  The Canada - South Korea deal rejects that approach with copyright, trademark, patent, and enforcement rules that are all consistent with current Canadian law (plus the coming border measures provisions in Bill C-8). 
On copyright, the summary states the agreement:

• reflects Canada's regime as updated by the 2012 Copyright Modernization Act, which brought Canada into compliance with the World Intellectual Property Organization's two Internet treaties;


• reiterates existing aspects of Canada's regime, including the protection of technological protection measures (technology designed to protect copyrighted material), protection of rights management information, and special measures against copyright infringers on the Internet (no change to Canada’s notice and notice regime, which defines the responsibility of Internet service providers in respect of copyrighted material on their networks).

The specific reference to notice-and-notice is important since it confirms no takedown requirements nor three-strikes rules. The specific measures against copyright infringers may be interpreted as Canada's enabler provision that targets websites that facilitate infringement. Moreover, the references to reflecting Canada's regime indicates that there is no copyright term extension or other substantive changes.

No copyright erxtensions.  No requirement that the other countries accept evergreening of drugs.

IP sanity.  What a concept.

H/t Slashdot.