Progress on IPR may restart talks

The government's efforts in protecting intellectual property rights may help kickstart negotiations on a trade and investment framework agreement (TIFA) between Taiwan and the US, a government official said yesterday.

"They [the US] think we are on the right track regarding the copyright protection issues," Jack Lu (盧文祥), deputy director-general of the Ministry of Economic Affairs' Intellectual Property Office (IPO), told the Taipei Times yesterday.

Lu made the remark after meeting Scott Ki, an official in charge of Taiwan affairs at the Office of the United States Trade Representative, as well as other US officials who came here for an IPR seminar held Tuesday in Taipei.

The officials also called on various government departments to learn the progress Taiwan is making to meet the requirements of signing a TIFA, a stepping stone toward a free-trade agreement (FTA), Lu said. IPR protection, a core consideration for the US in negotiating a TIFA with Taiwan, topped the agenda, he said.

"They agreed that we've improved a lot during the past few months on tackling piracy, but they want to see if the effort can be sustained throughout the next year," Lu said.

The US side expressed the hope that Taiwan can further amend the Copyright Law (著作權法), which was revised in June, Lu said.

"We'll consider proposing a stricter amendment to the law to the legislature later ... But it's not good timing at the moment because of the upcoming presidential election," Lu said.

The US delegates also met Council of Agriculture officials yesterday, as the ban on rice imports imposed by Taiwan is another important issue the US authorities are concerned about. But Wang Ming-lai (王明來), director-general of the council's international cooperation department, said they did not touch on the issue yesterday.

In October last year, Taiwan and the US started to prepare negotiations on signing a TIFA.

The two parties agreed to officially launch the talks in Washington the following month, but the timetable was disrupted because the US authorities complained that Taiwan did not fully comply with commitments it had made when entering the WTO last year, including protection of IPR and opening markets to foreign rice, pharmaceutical and telecommunication companies.

The impasse seemed to have been broken when Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Yi-fu (林義夫) told reporters during the APEC forum in October that Washington had agreed to resume the TIFA talks, and perhaps FTA talks, with Taiwan next year.

According to a report released by the US International Trade Commission in October last year, the US-Taiwan FTA would have a very small effect on the US economy, and a small impact on Taiwan's GDP.

Taiwan's government has been eager to sign an FTA with the US. The Taiwanese authorities speculate that the US is reluctant to do so because of pressure from China, while the US claims that Taiwan's poor performance on copyright protection and limitations on market access are hampering the trade talks.

In addition to the US, Taiwan is seeking to sign deals with Japan, New Zealand and Singapore. The move is to avoid being isolated amid the trend of bilateral free-trade agreements or regional trade agreements in the international community.

Currently, Taiwan has an FTA only with Panama, which the two countries signed on Aug. 21.