Peru – Free Trade Agreement

On December 7, 2005, Peru and the United States entered a bilateral free trade agreement. Previously, many products from Peru entered the U.S. market duty-free under the Andean Trade Preference Act. With regard to intellectual property rights, the Agreement provides that U.S. companies will be treated the same as Peruvian companies. The Agreement provides for the following improvements in Peruvian intellectual property rights protection:

Patents & Trade Secrets:

• Provides for the restoration of patent terms to compensate for delays in granting the original patent, consistent with U.S. practice.

• Limits the grounds for revoking a patent, thus protecting against arbitrary revocation.

• Clarifies that test data and trade secrets submitted to a government for the purpose of product approval will be protected against unfair commercial use for a period of 5 years for pharmaceuticals and 10 years for agricultural chemicals.

• Requires a system to prevent the marketing of pharmaceutical products that infringe patents.

• Provides protection for newly developed plant varieties.

Trademarks:

• Requires a system to resolve disputes about trademarks used in Internet domain names, which is important to prevent “cyber-squatting” with respect to high-value domain names.

• Applies the principle of “first-in-time, first-in right” to trademarks and geographical indications, so that the first person who acquires a right to a trademark or geographical indication is the person who has the right to use it.

• Requires the development of an on-line system for the registration and maintenance of trademarks, as well as a searchable database.

• Requires transparent procedures for the registration of trademarks, including geographical indications.

Copyrights:

• Copyright owners maintain rights over temporary copies of their works on computers, which is important in protecting music, videos, software and text from widespread unauthorized sharing via the Internet.

• Establishes that only authors, composers and other copyright owners have the right to make their work available on-line.

• Ensures extended terms of protection for copyrighted works, including phonograms, consistent with emerging international trends.

• Establishes strong anti-circumvention provisions to prohibit tampering with technologies (like embedded codes on discs) that are designed to prevent piracy and unauthorized distribution over the Internet.

• Ensures that governments use only legitimate computer software, thus setting a positive example for private users.

• Requires rules to prohibit the unauthorized receipt or distribution of encrypted satellite signals, thus preventing piracy of satellite television programming.

• Provides rules for the liability of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for copyright infringement, reflecting the balance struck in the U.S. Millennium Copyright Act between legitimate ISP activity and the infringement of copyrights.

On January 1, 2006, Peru also joined the Andean Free Trade Agreement which has been in effect since 1993 among Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Goods are traded under the agreement between these countries, free of any tariffs or duties.