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> That's why the WTO TRIPS agreement exists. As far as I can tell, TRIPS includes the EU PDO protections, so why are US companies selling "fake" EU food produc

> That's why the WTO TRIPS agreement exists. As far as I can tell, TRIPS includes the EU PDO protections, so why are US companies selling "fake" EU food products when the US government agreed to respect EU PDO trough TRIPS? Do EU companies simply not sue against that in US courts? I tried looking for cases like that, but I couldn't really find any examples. > Everyone agreed to the same laws, and agreed to allow foreigners to sue domestic businesses, so it doesn't matter who has jurisdiction over what. China is also member of TRIPS, don't have Americans the right to sue in China? Why is that not good enough when it's apparently good enough for EU PDO being violated in the US?

kmeisthax 6y ago
I'm not privy to the trade negotiations involved, but WTO rules don't get 1:1 copied into local law. For example, TRIPS just says countries need to have adequate legal protection for DRM, but DMCA Section 1201 takes that as an excuse to create an anticircumvention regime far stricter than required by TRIPS. I'm also somewhat confident that you can't sue if PDOs weren't locally implemented; even if the US promised to implement them but never got around to it. I have no idea what hurdles are involved with suing entities in China. I just know that many copyright owners find it too expensive to do so. Presumably, you'd need authorized legal representation in China to sue, which could be even more expensive. Legal translation would also be required, which would also cost money. These are all issues that current international law doesn't cover. Each jurisdiction is allowed to have it's own licensing standards and working languages. The closest thing I could think of to harmonizing that would be something like ISDS (investor-state dispute settlement), a process so onerous even the country that invented it hates them. There's plenty of other small deviations from WIPO law that member countries have sort-of gotten away with, such as... 1. Moral rights - Canada makes them waivable, which basically makes them meaningless. The US went a step further and never bothered to implement them, arguing that economic rights and contracts were sufficient to protect moral rights. (On the other hand, the US did implement moral rights in VARA, which is why the 5Pointz artists were able to sue and win millions when the property owner badly whitewashed over their authorized graffiti.) 2. Copyright formalities - We spent a literal century trying to get rid of copyright formalities, leading to the world of today where everything is born copyrighted and it is literally impossible for something to fall out of copyright until it has been escheated to the public domain. However, if you do not register your copyright in the US, you cannot sue. Even if you register after-the-fact, you lose your statutory damages if the infringement happened before registration. For the vast majority of infringements, that means there's no money in enforcing your copyright, and all you can really get is some kind of a restraining order on the infringer.

kmeisthax 6y ago

I'm not privy to the trade negotiations involved, but WTO rules don't get 1:1 copied into local law. For example, TRIPS just says countries need to have adequate legal protection for DRM, but DMCA Section 1201 takes that as an excuse to create an anticircumvention regime far stricter than required by TRIPS. I'm also somewhat confident that you can't sue if PDOs weren't locally implemented; even if the US promised to implement them but never got around to it. I have no idea what hurdles are involved with suing entities in China. I just know that many copyright owners find it too expensive to do so. Presumably, you'd need authorized legal representation in China to sue, which could be even more expensive. Legal translation would also be required, which would also cost money. These are all issues that current international law doesn't cover. Each jurisdiction is allowed to have it's own licensing standards and working languages. The closest thing I could think of to harmonizing that would be something like ISDS (investor-state dispute settlement), a process so onerous even the country that invented it hates them. There's plenty of other small deviations from WIPO law that member countries have sort-of gotten away with, such as... 1. Moral rights - Canada makes them waivable, which basically makes them meaningless. The US went a step further and never bothered to implement them, arguing that economic rights and contracts were sufficient to protect moral rights. (On the other hand, the US did implement moral rights in VARA, which is why the 5Pointz artists were able to sue and win millions when the property owner badly whitewashed over their authorized graffiti.) 2. Copyright formalities - We spent a literal century trying to get rid of copyright formalities, leading to the world of today where everything is born copyrighted and it is literally impossible for something to fall out of copyright until it has been escheated to the public domain. However, if you do not register your copyright in the US, you cannot sue. Even if you register after-the-fact, you lose your statutory damages if the infringement happened before registration. For the vast majority of infringements, that means there's no money in enforcing your copyright, and all you can really get is some kind of a restraining order on the infringer.