Key IP Takeaways From The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement

On September 30, 2018, the United States, Mexico and Canada reached a trade agreement to supersede the North American Free Trade Agreement. The aptly named United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement includes intellectual property provisions covering patents, trademarks, copyright, trade secrets and domain names. USMCA Chapter 20, which contains the intellectual property-related portion of the agreement, is based in part on the abandoned Trans-Pacific Partnership, maintains some NAFTA provisions and includes entirely new ones. Although the agreement awaits ratification in all three countries, the general consensus among intellectual property owners that is it is an improvement over prior trade agreements.