China, Others Cited For Not Doing Enough To Protect IP
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative Friday released its annual "Special 301" report that identifies countries that are not doing enough to protect U.S. intellectual property and noted that three Eastern European countries have been moved off the watch list by making significant progress on the issue.
The report "identifies a wide range of serious concerns, ranging from troubling 'indigenous innovation' policies that may unfairly disadvantage U.S. rights holders in China, to the continuing challenges of Internet piracy in countries such as Canada and Spain, to the ongoing systemic IPR enforcement challenges in many countries around the world," according to the report.
USTR said it removed Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland from its watch list. On Hungary, the report notes that "it has taken proactive steps to address the growing threat of Internet piracy, and its customs and police officials have developed their ability to effectively identify infringing products." Hungary was praised for taking "some initial steps to address Internet piracy concerns," while USTR noted the Czech Republic's passage of a law enhancing penalties for IP infringement.
Still despite this, the report highlighted several other trouble spots including China, which along with 10 other countries has been placed on its "priority watch list." USTR singled out China's indigenous innovation policies that favor home-grown technologies and intellectual property over foreign firms or which require foreign firms to share their IP with Chinese partners. "Procurement preferences and other measures favoring 'indigenous innovation' could severely restrict market access for American technology and products," U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in a statement.
The report also noted that the U.S. music industry claims that "the vast majority of all illegal downloads of music" are associated with China's largest search engine, Baidu.
The report includes an Internet and digital piracy section that notes the United States has "significant" concerns about Internet piracy in Brazil, Canada, China, India, Italy, Russia, Spain and Ukraine. "Unauthorized retransmission of live sports telecasts over the Internet continues to be a growing concern in many countries, particularly China, and 'linking sites,' many reportedly based in the Netherlands, are exacerbating the problem," the report said.
It also cited concerns raised by U.S. copyright industries about the growing use of mobile phones, palm devices, flash drives and other mobile technologies for piracy. Some of these devices are being sold in some countries with illegal content already preloaded on the products, according to the report.
Not surprisingly, groups dependent on strong protections of intellectual property such as the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Global Intellectual Property Center praised USTR's efforts to push other countries to do more to protect IP.
"This year's report continues to focus attention on the need for a more robust global response to Internet piracy," Neil Turkewitz, RIAA's executive vice president for international, said. "We hope that U.S. trading partners will indeed take up this critical issue -- particularly some of our the most economically developed countries where legislation has failed to keep pace with the requisites of modern society such as Canada and Spain."
Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn criticized the report for not adequately scrutinizing the claims of IP interests. "Once again, the U.S. Trade Representative ... has produced a report that mirrors the views of big media companies," she said. "In judging the efforts of other countries to enforce intellectual property rights, USTR has failed to include any notion of balance in copyright law and failed to make public the statistics it used to support its pronouncements on the activities of other countries.
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