USTR Issues 2008 Special 301 Report
25-Apr-2008 WASHINGTON, DC - The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) released, on April 25, 2008, its annual “Special 301” Report on the adequacy and effectiveness of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) protection by US trading partners, a press release by the Office stated.
The Special 301 Report constitutes a critical policy tool for focusing on urgent problems including the growing problem of Internet piracy and the counterfeiting of pharmaceuticals and other products that threaten the health and safety of consumers around the world.
The Report provides a basis for constructive engagement with US trading partners in order to address these challenges, particularly in key countries such as China and Russia.
Continuing Concerns in China and Russia
This year, USTR’s Special 301 Report highlights serious IPRs concerns with respect to China and Russia, in spite of some evidence of improvement in both countries.
USTR announced that it will once again retain China on the Priority Watch List and continue monitoring China under Section 306 of the 1974 Trade Act, thus maintaining pressure on China to improve its IPRs situation. While the US continues to seek cooperative channels to work with China to strengthen that country’s IPRs regime, high levels of copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting remain serious concerns. At the same time, the US is also using the WTO dispute settlement process to address a number of specific deficiencies in China’s IPRs regime.
The Administration also continues to work for improvements to the Intellectual Property (IP) regime in Russia. Although Russia has made some progress – for example, in moving optical disc factories off of government-controlled sites and raiding unlicensed factories – large-scale production and distribution of IP-infringing optical media and Internet piracy remain significant problems that require more enforcement action.
The US will continue to monitor to ensure that Russia moves to implement a variety of legal and law enforcement improvements to which it committed as part of a bilateral agreement with the US on Russia’s accession to the WTO. Implementation of these commitments remains essential to completing the final multilateral negotiations on the overall accession package.
Improvements Noted for Several Trading Partners
In addition to flagging prominent IP concerns of US trade policy, the Special 301 Report also provides an opportunity to recognize trading partners whose efforts to improve IP protection and enforcement are delivering results both for home-grown innovators in those countries and for US right holders.
Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey and Ukraine are being moved to the Watch List (from Priority Watch List), reflecting improvements in each country’s IPRs regime. Two other trading partners – Belize and Lithuania – are being removed from the Special 301 Report altogether.
To sum up, this year’s Special 301 Report places 46 countries on the Priority Watch List, Watch List, or the Section 306 monitoring list.
There are 9 countries on this year’s Priority Watch List: China, Russia, Argentina, Chile, India, Israel, Pakistan, Thailand and Venezuela. Countries on the Priority Watch List do not provide an adequate level of IPRs protection or enforcement, or market access for persons relying on IP Protection, in absolute terms and/or relative to a range of factors such as their level of development. Priority Watch List countries will be the subject of particularly intense engagement through bilateral discussion during the coming year.
Meanwhile, 36 trading partners are on the lower level Watch List, meriting bilateral attention to address IPRs problems: Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Jamaica, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Republic of Korea, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
The Administration will conduct Out-of-Cycle Reviews for Taiwan and Israel to assess progress on specific IPRs issues.
Paraguay will continue to be subject to Section 306 monitoring under a bilateral Memorandum of Understanding that establishes objectives and actions for addressing IPRs concerns in that country.