I just wanted to point everyone to this piece reprinted in the Latin Business Chronicle with statements on the Costa Rican referendum on DR-CAFTA.  It includes thoughts from:

• Sonia Picado, former Costa Rican Ambassador and President of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights
• Todd Tucker, Research Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch
• Jose Carlos Quirce, Costa Rica’s Special Envoy for CAFTA in Washington
• Otton Solis, who ran against Oscar Arias in last year’s presidential election
• Alan Thompson, Partner at Bufete Thompson & Asociados in Costa Rica

Costa Rica: Yes to CAFTA?

Since the last time this blog was updated, there has been some developments with the status of DR-CAFTA in Costa Rica. Two different avenues to the decision on approving the agreement have arisen: a vote and a review by Costa Rica’s constitutional court.

The legislative and executive branches of Costa Rican government have been unable to reach a decision on ratification, and as a result, it has been decided that the people of Costa Rica will directly vote on the issue in a nationwide referendum to be held in September 2007.  Costa Rican president Oscar Arias Sánchez has been trying to gain approval of DR-CAFTA, which was a part of his presidential platform in the sharply contested 2006 elections.

It also has been reported that Costa Rica’s Constitutional Court has also announced that it will review the constitutionality of the agreement. Their findings are expected in June.

Costa Rica is the only country in the DR-CAFTA agreement which has signed but not ratified the agreement.  The other countries are Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and the United States.  The agreement was originally negotiated without the Dominican Republic, who was added after the text was finalized and the agreement was renamed DR-CAFTA (or CAFTA-DR).  It has been ratified and has entered into force with all parties save Costa Rica.

Postscript: After a hiatus, this blog will return to regular updates (marking and other projects have taken their toll).

So if you’ve been wondering why we haven’t blogged lately, this is one of the reasons. We’ve been hard at work on the report for the IT-based business and FTA report. The report has been released as part of our working paper series and placed on SSRN. Citation and abstract below:

Brown, Abbe E. L. , Guadamuz, Andres L. and Hatcher, Jordan S., “The Impact of Free Trade Agreements on Information Technology Based Business” (April 15, 2007). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=984864

Abstract:
This report considers the Dominican Republic - Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) and its impact on Information Technology (IT) based businesses. The report summarises the factual background to, and contents of, the agreement, and then reviews those parts of the agreement (or omissions from the agreement) that are relevant to the IT field. IT is of interest both because of its potential importance as a contributor to business (and social) growth, but also because of the lesser international roles accorded to it in comparison with its sister, intellectual property (IP). The IT-related provisions of DR-CAFTA reflect international IT (and IP) controversies. But DR-CAFTA also raises questions of the place of agreements between states, their legal validity and their impact upon international relationships and global development.

The primary objective of this project was to explore the extent to which DR-CAFTA impacts upon IT based businesses; the implications of this; to assess how much these issues, and associated economic and legal questions, had been addressed; and to lay the foundations for further legal and interdisciplinary work. We have not, at this stage, explored all the issues covered and not covered in DR-CAFTA, and arising in respect of other agreements of this nature. Rather, we have sought to introduce the issues, provide preliminary comment, and provide a list of resources for further study. We hope that this will be helpful to those coming to the project from a variety of backgrounds, including different legal specialities.

We have concluded that there are important issues to be developed regarding all free trade agreements and IT. These issues are highlighted in the following sections. In terms of immediate further work, we propose investigating the present and future impact of UDRP provisions in DR-CAFTA countries, and liability of Internet Service Providers (ISPs). We believe that these can raise important questions combining IT, e-commerce, IP, trade, human rights and competition issues; both for DR-CAFTA countries and those contemplating their own agreements. We also consider that there is a need for international and interdisciplinary collaboration for this work to be done, including through empirical research with ISPs and domain name owners. We propose holding an international meeting of experts. As a preliminary step, we are also publishing this report in Spanish.

Progress has been shared on the project blog, http://freetrade.opencontentlaw.org throughout, and we have been delighted with the interest expressed from a variety of corners. We anticipate this report being transformed into a wiki and for further contributions to be developed via web-based. We hope to maintain the project’s momentum through the wiki, and details of this will be posted on the blog.

This project was one of the final activities of Phase 1 of the AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law at the University of Edinburgh (AHRC Research Centre). We are grateful to the AHRC for their support, and look forward to pursuing parts of this work in Phase 2.