IP Enforcement

'Provocations and Challenges Concerning Enforcement and Civil Procedure in IP' (Sydney Law School Research Paper No. 14/03 ) by Kimberlee G. Weatherall is concerned with

 international developments in intellectual property enforcement and, in particular, with increasingly specific provisions found in international instruments relating to civil procedure in IP. Apart from highlighting the need for academic attention to the trend, the paper analyses the obligation, found in recent instruments such as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and drafts for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), that enforcement procedures must be 'fair and equitable'. It examines the genesis of this obligation in TRIPS, the extent to which it has content beyond the specific rules in TRIPS, how effective and enforceable it is likely to be, and, using some examples drawn from recent developments, whether broader conceptions of the right to a fair trial in international human rights instruments can help us interpret when procedures are 'fair' or 'equitable'.