The US Trade Representative office is planning to take the first step this week toward possibly easing or ending the biggest trade dispute between Washington and Taiwan -- protracted friction over intellectual piracy.
The US trade office will issue a public notice later in the week seeking the public's comments on whether it should remove Taiwan from Washington's "Special 301" priority watch list, a trade office spokesman said.
Taiwan has been on the list, which monitors violations of intellectual property rights, for three-and-a-half years.
Washington has accused Taipei of not doing enough to stamp out piracy of movies, music, software and industrially copyrighted items.
The notice will appear in the Federal Register as part of the agency's so-called "out-of-cycle review" of Taiwan's status under the trade law, the spokesman said. The Federal Register is the official daily compendium of all major US regulatory actions.
The US placed Taiwan on the priority list in April 2001, and has renewed that designation annually ever since.
While the US trade office has conducted out-of-cycle reviews in the fall in recent years to see if Taiwan should be dropped from the list, this year is believed to be the first time the review has gone as far as an official Federal Register notice.
Inclusion on the priority list does not carry any penalties, but it could lead to trade sanctions if the situation fails to improve, and impact on bilateral relations. Intellectual property rights is one of the thorniest issues in US-Taiwan trade relations.
Although the US trade office kept Taiwan on the priority list when it issued its annual report in May, it heaped praise on the progress the nation had made to stamp out pirated goods.
But it also bemoaned the fact that pirates had responded by finding creative ways to keep selling their wares.
US officials said at the time that they were impressed by the legislation Taiwan had passed in recent years to clamp down on piracy, as well as the country's enhanced enforcement efforts.
In July, assistant US trade representative Charles Freeman flew to Taiwan for talks with senior economic officials after the nation's renewed efforts to combat piracy convinced Washington that the time might be ripe for a renewal of high-level talks, which were broken off in late 2002 owing to a lack of progress.
After his talks in Taipei, Freeman was described as being impressed by the nation's efforts to protect copyright. He also expressed his willingness to resume high-level talks.
Such talks would be aimed at signing an agreement on a trade and investment framework, which could be the first step toward a bilateral free trade agreement between Taipei and Washington.
Freeman was also quoted as saying that, as a result of his trip to Taiwan, he would review the situation to see if the nation should be removed from the Special 301 watch list.
In June, representatives of the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei went on their annual trip to Washington for meetings with US officials, members of Congress and think tanks.
The delegation members said that they had found an improvement in the "tone" of Taiwan's trade policies aimed at solving the piracy dispute since President Chen Shui-bian's (
Referring to a meeting between delegation members and Premier Yu Shyi-kun before their trip, the body's executive director, Richard Vuylsteke, told reporters in Washington that "my impression from the premier is that they are working hard to make sure" that Freeman's visit "is a productive one."
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