• Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
    2·
    5 days ago

    This seems to be referencing Regulation (EU) 654/2014, an EU law which allows the EU to unilaterally enact countermeasures against countries that break the WTO’s rules.

    The countermeasures listed in article 5 are:

    • Imposing tarriffs and customs duties
    • Trade restrictions/quotas
    • Cancelling contracts between the EU and the target country
    • Cancelling the target country’s intellectual property rights (e.g. patents/copyrights)
    • Banning public procurement from the target country
    • Implementing price penalties for public procurement from the target country

    The law was amended in Regulation (EU) 2021/167 in response to the Trump (and now Biden) administrations blocking the appointment of judges to the WTO and using a loophole to kill the WTO’s enforcement mechanism.

    More context from the EU parliament:
    https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2020/652021/EPRS_BRI(2020)652021_EN.pdf

    The fact that the EU can just suspend American patents and copyrights is pretty insane. Could be some huge benefits for European companies and movie pirates.

      • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
        2·
        5 days ago

        If EU did that, it would probably result in equal retaliation. It would mean that all patents and IP would become local. Stealing these things from others continents would become fair game, which would make patents and IP almost completely pointless.

        Could we please try that out? Sounds like an interesting scenario.

        • JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world
          1·
          5 days ago

          Parents and IP would become local

          You’re telling me we could have more diverse innovation that catered to the needs of individuals if we allowed people to create tools that help them and their neighbors instead of saying “some guy decided a hundred years ago, on the other side of the planet, that this is what this tool looked like. If you call something else by this name we’ll sue you and if you call something that looks like this something else we’ll sue you for that too”?