The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a proposed plurilateral trade agreement in response "to the increase in global trade of counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works."The scope of ACTA is broad, including physical goods, as well as "internet distribution and information technology".

In October 2007, the European Community, Switzerland announced that they would negotiate ACTA. Furthermore the following countries have joined the negotiations: Australia, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Jordan, Morocco, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Canada.^[The ACTA negotiations have been conducted in secrecy until on 22 May 2008 a discussion paper about the proposed agreement was uploaded to Wikileaks, and newspaper reports about the secret negotiations quickly followed.

  Negotiations were originally anticipated to conclude by the end of 2008, however in November 2008 the European Commission stated that negotiations are likely to continue in 2009.According to New Zealand ACTA would "establish a new international legal framework" and "the goal of ACTA is to set a new, higher benchmark for intellectual property rights enforcement that countries can join on a voluntary basis. ACTA is part of a broader "forum shifting" strategy employed by the trade representatives of the US, EC, Japan, and other supporters of rigid intellectual property enforcement: similar terms and provisions currently appear in the World Customs Organization draft SECURE treaty.

  The British Statute of Anne, full title “An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned”, was the first act to directly protect the rights of authors. Since its inception, copyright is considered a property right and attempts to balance the rights of the producer with the rights of society at large. According to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), intellectual property laws, which includes industrial property and copyright, exist for primarely two reasons: