ACTA will have deeper impact on Europe than on United States

On Tuesday, August 17, 2010, USTR organized a lunch between ACTA negotiators and civil society NGOs. Knowledge Ecology International reported: "At the lunch there was discussion among the Australian, Japan, US and Singapore negotiators over this issue. Some delegates pointed out that the U.S. had spent a lot of time talking about the fact that this was an executive agreement, and therefore 'could not' change U.S. law. Therefore, they argued, it was understood that ACTA would grandfather in any inconsistency between U.S. law and ACTA. People were not so sure how this worked for other countries in the negotiations -- including those where the ACTA provisions would clearly require changes in national laws, if taken seriously. Some delegates indicated that it was hard to understand what ACTA meant, at this point, given the many brackets in the text, and a lack of understanding about how the 'general' and 'high level' provisions of the ACTA would apply to a country's actual laws. Other delegates said the issue of exceptions to ACTA obligations, while important, had not really been addressed in the negotiations."