On Friday U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab released the latest
Special 301 report, which highlights the nations most flagrantly violating
international treaties on intellectual property protection. You can see our
praise for the USTR's latest efforts in a statement
we released Friday. (See highlights of our statement and others in Associated
Press and CNET coverage,
among other places.) We highlighted the fact that these efforts benefit all
rightsholders, from "the biggest multi-media company to the individual graphic
artist working out of her home," like the graphic artist I recently
profiled who suffered a dramatic case of infringement by a publisher in Hong
Kong.

Speaking of Hong Kong, China once again was on the "priority watch list"
along with Russia. Both of those nations were singled out for special attention,
and the US currently is in a WTO dispute with China that involves its IP
protections. China and Russia were joined on the priority watch list by
Argentina, Chile, India,
Israel, Pakistan, Thailand and Venezuela. There are 36 countries on a
lower-level watch list, which includes Canada.
USTR urged Canada, which has yet to implement its WIPO obligations after more
than ten years, with the following statement:

Canada has taken some significant steps in the past year and, given the
importance of the outstanding issues and maturity of its economy, we look
forward to additional action in the coming months on the IP reforms identified
as key priorities by the Government of Canada.

Finally, Paraguay is under what's called a Section 306 monitoring that
involves a bilateral memorandum of understanding. Schwab said that she will be
using bilateral negotiations to seek to improve the IP enforcement process of
watch list countries, specifically noting the importance of bilateral trade
agreements.

Whenever the latest 301 report comes out, we get to see how hard the USTR is
fighting for copyright holders abroad, a very important role given the fact that
for many copyright industries, a majority of their revenues and profit come from
sales abroad, and these sales are a critical part of our international trading
position. However, these reports also tend to highlight just how far we have to
go, and just how difficult it can be to work with a country that simply refuses
to adhere to its international obligations.

Any effort to boost international copyright enforcement is welcomed. Perhaps
it is good timing, then, that the House Judiciary Committee has just announced
it is marking up Wednesday, April 30, at 10:15 am, HR-4279, the PRO-IP Act, by
the committee's chairman, Mr. John Conyers (D-Mich.). We at the Copyright
Alliance have
consistently
applauded
Mr. Conyers and the other PRO-IP cosponsors for seeking to promote stronger IP
protection.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 8:58 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under capitol hill, international, piracy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.