WikiLeaks has released the final text for the Intellectual Property Rights Chapter of the infamous Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
The Intellectual Property Rights chapter has been seen as one of the more controversial part of the trade deal, “due to its wide-ranging effects on internet services, medicines, publishers, civil liberties and biological patents,” reads the WikiLeaks press release.
On the document, WikiLeaks makes it clear this is the final agreement:
“There is still a finishing 'legal scrub' of the document meant to occur, but there are to be no more negotiations between the Parties.”
“If TPP is ratified, people in the Pacific-Rim countries would have to live by the rules in this leaked text,” said Peter Maybarduk, Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program Director. “The new monopoly rights for big pharmaceutical firms would compromise access to medicines in TPP countries. The TPP would cost lives.”
Despite already coming to a final agreement Oct. 5, the final text is still being withheld from the public, and is reportedly staying on hold until after the Canadian elections – one of the participating nations – on Oct. 19.
The trade deal, which involves 12 nations and over 40 percent of the global economy, has been highly criticized for being discussed and negotiated entirely in secret for up to five years.