A top US business lobby group is to launch a probe into counterfeiting in India's film industry and hold a global summit in bootleg capital China to highlight intellectual property rights abuses.
The world's two most populous nations are already on the "priority watchlist" of the US Trade Repre-sentative office's annual report of measures taken by countries around the world to protect intellectual property rights.
The US Chamber of Commerce unveiled its 2007 business strategy last week with a multi-million dollar program to fight copyright piracy which it says costs the US economy up to US$250 billion and 750,000 US jobs every year.
Chamber chief Thomas Don-ohue said the three-pronged program of education, detection and enforcement would include "a study in India to measure the effects of piracy on Bollywood."
The Indian movie industry, which churns out about 1,000 films per year, is the largest by volume in the world, but revenues are very small.
A key problem facing Bollywood is copyright infringement through the illegal sale of VCD, DVD and videotape movie copies, as well as online piracy -- all of which are expected to be covered by the US business group's study in the first half of the year.
US concerns over Bollywood piracy are understandable.
Movies from India are the top-grossing foreign film category in the US, with annual sales estimated at US$1.5 billion, said Title-Match Entertainment Group, subsidiary of a US provider of DVD on-demand systems.
Turnover for Bollywood is expected to grow 16 percent annually over the next five years, bringing the market to more than US$3 billion, it said.
In addition, Hindi film distributors are aggressively marketing their movies in the US digital-cable services, industry reports say.
Movie piracy causes a total output loss for US industries of US$20.5 billion per year and accounts for more than US$800 million in lost tax revenue, according to a US study relayed to the US Chamber of Commerce.
In China, the US chamber will hold a world summit in March on intellectual property innovation while partnering with Interpol to establish a "global IP database," Donohue said.
This is the first time the chamber is working with the Chinese government to hold a world gathering to protect intellectual property, a chamber official said.
The chamber lobbied hard and got the US government to conduct a special study on China's efforts on copyright protection and enforcement at the provincial level.
The study will look at China's enforcement system as it is applied by the local authorities to problems US industries confront, ranging from retail piracy and counterfeiting in major cities to manufacturing in key industrial areas, US Trade Representative Susan Schwab said recently.
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