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US nears end of new IPR review

US trade officials are near the end of a review evaluating Taiwan’s prolonged crackdown on intellectual property piracy that could lead to Taiwan’s removal from a list of countries the US considers serious violators of copyrights and other intellectual property rights (IPR), senior US Trade Representative (USTR) officials said.

The review is called an out-of-cycle (OCR) review, and began earlier this year shortly after the USTR office released its latest annual report on “Special 301” issues, named for the section of US trade law that deals with IPR issues.

USTR officials have been in touch with Taiwan representatives throughout the process and sent a staff delegation to Taipei last month to discuss the OCR and the outstanding IPR issues.

While the officials could not venture a prediction on whether the current review would convince them to drop Taiwan from the so-called IPR “watch list,” they did offer some positive comments in an exclusive interview with the Taipei Times this week.

“In part, the announcement of the OCR is reflective of our recognition that there was swift progress being made in Taiwan on some of those issues, and a desire on our part to consider that progress earlier than next year,” when the next Special 301 report comes out, said one senior USTR official, who was not permitted to be identified by name.

Taiwan has been on the watch list, and the more severe priority watch list, since August 1998.

In 2001, it was elevated to the priority list, and was placed back on the watch list in 2004.

It remained on the list in this year’s Special 301 report.

In that and earlier reports, the USTR office praised Taiwan for making progress in its fight against piracy, but that progress was never enough to lead the US to remove Taiwan from the watch list.

The OCR is interpreted by some as a tacit admission that the agency may have been too harsh.

The specific problems identified by the USTR in its latest and other recent reports, have focused on Internet piracy such as peer-to-peer file sharing, on-campus piracy, and the Ministry of Education’s Taiwan Academic Network (TANet).

It has also called for legislation to impose liability on Internet service providers for enabling piracy. While the officials declined to comment on any of those issues individually, they did praise Taiwan for creating a special IPR Court, which was inaugurated earlier this month.

“We welcome the news that the IPR Court has become operational,” one official said. “In the Special 301 Report, we urged Taiwan to make the IPR Court operational as soon as possible, and we appreciate hearing reports that that has now taken place.”

Overall, “it is clear that Taiwan has made progress,” although outstanding issues remain, the official said.

“Weighing the significance of the progress against the significance of the outstanding issues is exactly the kind of discussion that takes place with the councils of the US government in the interagency groups charged with making that decision,” he said.

“So what I can say is that every consideration will be given to the progress that has been made as well as to the challenges that lie ahead,” he said.

The officials said they expected to announce the results of their review “in the near future.”

That would come in the form of a notice in the Federal Register, an official compendium of government regulations and actions, which would give the public 30 or 60 days to comment on the recommendations.

Then, an interagency committee, made up of representatives of the USTR, the departments of State, Commerce and Justice and other agencies, will discuss the comments and the USTR’s decisions. After the agencies sign onto the decision, it would become final.
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