Despite a year-long anti-piracy drive by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan remains on the "Watch List" of intellectual-property-right (IPR) violators under the US' Special 301 Law.
Huang Chih-peng (黃志鵬), director-general of the ministry's Bureau of Foreign Trade, said it is a pity that Taiwan remains on the list since the government has made every endeavor to combat piracy, including passing stronger copyright and pharmaceutical laws.
On Jan. 19, the US Trade Representative's (USTR) office announced it was lowering Taiwan's status from the "Priority Watch List" to a less severe rating on the "Watch List," in recognition of the country's efforts to improve IPR protection.
A Chinese-language newspaper speculated earlier this week that the US might remove Taiwan from the list when the USTR released its annual IPR review on Friday.
But the USTR kept Taiwan on the Watch List this year as the US continues to monitor the government's efforts on IPR issues.
"We continue to monitor Tai-wan's efforts to combat Internet piracy, enact judicial reforms, implement the new data protection law, prevent illegal copying of textbooks, abolish the Export Monitoring System (EMS) and prevent unauthorized cable operations in southern and central Taiwan," the USTR reported on its Web site.
Although more issues need to be addressed, the US nevertheless made positive comments on what Taiwan has done over the past year.
The office said that, with an IPR-specific task force made perm-anent, inspections of optical media factories and retail distribution centers have increased and the police also stepped up inspections to promote IPR protection.
"The US copyright industry reports that Taiwan's increased enforcement efforts resulted in a significant drop in estimated trade losses from a high of US$847.9 million in 2002 to US$315.5 million in 2004," it said in the report.
In response, Huang said in a press release yesterday that the nation will this year continue with its IPR-protection efforts.
"These efforts will range from preventing Internet piracy, reducing corporate use of pirated software and deterring illegal copying of textbooks to reducing rampant circulation of fake medicines," Huang said.
"[We] urged the US government to take notice of Taiwan's efforts and remove the nation's name from the Special 301 list as early as possible," he said.
RSS