Welcome to our new blog! The focus of this blog is on Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and their impact on Information Technology based businesses. The primary focus for research will be the Dominican Republic – Central American FTA (DR-CAFTA) agreement, a recent FTA signed between several Central American nations, the Dominican Republic, and the United States.

Though DR-CAFTA was chosen to give the project focus, we will refer to several other FTAs, such as the Chile-US FTA and the Australian-US FTA, as well as similar agreements involving the European Union.

Specifically, this project will start by focusing in on issues of intermediary liability (such as for internet service providers) and privacy. This will include comparative study on international treaties covering liability issues, as well as specific pieces of legislation such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the USA.

In addition, these agreements also impact intellectual property law within the parties to the agreement. Changes to IP law can have drastic effect on the legal liability for IT businesses for copyright infringement or violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of these laws. The required changes can also have serious affect on such diverse issues as public health (drug patents), traditional knowledge, human rights, and competition law (anti-trust). These areas will also be included in the study as these areas can indirectly affect IT-based businesses.

This blog, as well as an eventual wiki, form the two primary web-based outputs of this project. In addition, we will producing a report, which will be available for download, and we are considering holding an experts meeting on this issue for Summer 2007.

This project is just one of many by the AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law in the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh. To learn more about the Centre, please see its homepage or follow the link at the top of the page.