Following-up on Henning's post, let me ask a very basic question: Why is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) referred to as a "trade agreement"? I'm sure this has been discussed somewhere, but I have not come across it.
As Henning points out, ACTA appears to create trade barriers, not reduce them, which is the opposite of what "trade agreements" normally do (that's how I see it, anyway; some who accuse the WTO of creating "managed trade" would no doubt disagree). And from an overview of key ACTA issues at Balkinization, it seems that the scope is pretty clearly about substantive IP issues, with only a limited connection to trade.
So why call it a trade agreement? Two possibilities occur to me:
1) It's easier to market international agreements as "trade agreements" than as IP protection agreements. That may sound odd, given how difficult it has been recently to adopt actual trade agreements. But perhaps the feeling is that greater protections for IP would be even less popular, so calling it a "trade agreement" is a better approach.
2) Having moved IP protection into the trade sphere, through TRIPS and IP chapters of FTAs, everyone just got used to thinking of IP as a trade issuue, and it seemed natural to call ACTA a trade agreement, even though it has nothing to do with trade. Well, not nothing, but very little. Yes, it deals with "border measures" related to goods with possible IP violations. Overall, though, in my view, ACTA relates to trade as much as, say, carbon emissions relate to trade, and I have not heard anyone suggest calling for a "Carbon Emission Trade Agreement."
