WASHINGTON - The Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) announced on April 28, 2006 the release of its "Special 301" Annual Report on the adequacy and effectiveness of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) protection in 87 countries.
The report identifies governments that need to take stronger actions to combat piracy and counterfeiting, for example, by cracking down on illegal optical disc production and Internet piracy, or stepping up border enforcement against trade in fake goods.
"This report acknowledges the positive steps that several of our trading partners have taken to strengthen IPRs protection over the past year," said US Trade Representative Mr. Rob Portman.
This year's Special 301 Report places 48 countries on the Priority Watch List (PWL), Watch List (WL) or the Section 306 monitoring list.
Countries on the PWL do not provide an adequate level of IPRs protection or enforcement, or market access for persons relying on intellectual property protection. In addition to China and Russia, eleven countries are placed on the PWL in this year's report including Argentina, Belize, Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Ukraine and Venezuela.
Thirty-four trading countries are placed on the lower level of the WL, meriting bilateral attention to address the underlying IPRs problems. The WL countries are the Bahamas, Belarus, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, European Union, Guatemala, Hungary, Italy, Jamaica, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, the Republic of Korea, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
This year’s Special 301 Report adds a new section that notes the improvements and progress that several countries have made in addressing IPR-related concerns identified in previous Special 301 Reports. Pakistan, Ukraine, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, and Taiwan have made progress in IPRs protection and enforcement against retail piracy, Internet piracy, and optical disc pirate production.
Due to progress on intellectual property, the status of several countries has been improved since last year’s Special 301 Report. Ukraine, the Philippines, Kuwait and Pakistan were moved from the PWL to the WL. Four countries were removed from the WL entirely because of improvement in intellectual property protection: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Slovak Republic and Uruguay.
This year, Paraguay continues to be subject to Section 306 monitoring list and the United States will work with it to address numerous IPRs concerns.