From the pants on fire dept: Lobbyist Insists His Meeting About 'TPP IP Issues' Wasn't About TPP IP
issues.
We recently wrote about the ridiculous revolving door between the USTR and various copyright and patent maximalist lobbying organizations. If you want to know why the USTR always is pushing for maximalist positions, that's a good place to start. Our post was commenting on an article by Tim Lee at the Washington Post, in which he highlighted numerous examples of the revolving door between maximalist lobbying groups and the USTR. One of his very first examples was former top USTR official Ralph Ives, who signed a big deal, and then quickly went to work for a lobbying group that represents medical device manufacturers. Here's what Lee wrote:
The lead American negotiator was Ralph Ives, who was promoted to Assistant USTR for Pharmaceutical Policy soon after the negotiations concluded. He was aided by Claude Burcky, Deputy Assistant USTR for Intellectual Property. Less than three months after the Australia agreement was signed, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that both men would take jobs at pharmaceutical or medical device companies. Their new employers stood to benefit from some of the pro-patent-holder provisions of the treaty. Ives took a job at AdvaMed, a trade group representing medical device manufacturers. Burcky moved to the pharmaceutical and medical device company Abbott Labs.
Later in the piece, Lee quoted Advamed angrily denying that Ives was lobbying USTR on intellectual property issues:
But AdvaMed disputes an accusation from Love that it has been lobbying USTR on patent issues. "Neither AdvaMed nor Ives has ever provided USTR comments on a provision of the TPP IP chapter," an AdvaMed spokeswoman stated by email.
Okay. That was on November 26th at 2:22pm ET. Less than four hours later, Jamie Love over at KEI released a bunch of FOIA'd documents, showing 127 pages of emails between various industry lobbyists and the USTR concerning intellectual property issues on the TPP agreement. Tim Lee noted that not only do those emails show a very cozy relationship between IP lobbyists and the USTR, they show very clearly that Ives was, in fact, lobbying on IP issues. Here, for example, is an email showing a meeting that is scheduled involving the USTR and various "cleared advisors" including Ives, and the subject matter is listed as "TPP IP issues."
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131130/14233225407/former-ustr-official-now-lobbyist-insists-he-doesnt-lobby-ustr-about-ip-released-emails-show-otherwise.shtml
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