For at least another year, Taiwan will remain on a US government's list of countries considered by Washington to have posted unsatisfactory records fighting intellectual property piracy, the US Trade Representative office announced on Monday.
The decision, which leaves Taiwan on the "watch list" of countries with piracy and counterfeiting problems at least through next April, perpetuates a trade dispute that has gone on for nearly a decade and which has been one of the leading trade issues between the US and Taiwan.
The action was announced with the trade office's release of its latest annual Special 301 Report, named after the section of US trade laws that deals with intellectual property rights (IPR).
While the US trade office lauded Taiwan for its record of stepped-up enforcement and legislative actions, it made clear that piracy over the Internet, especially over the Ministry of Education's TANet service, plus copyright violations at universities, kept Taiwan from being removed from the list.
A government official at the Intellectual Property Office in Taipei yesterday expressed dissatisfaction and regret over the US' decision to retain Taiwan on the watch list.
"We've made a great deal of effort to crack down on piracy and strengthen enforcement, so much so that no major IPR violations were found last year," Bennet Chen (陳文斌), director of the Intellectual Property Office's international affairs and general planning division, said by phone yesterday.
Taiwan was removed from the Special 301 Priority Watch List to the less stringent Watch List in 2005.
Chen said his office would continue working hard to ensure the nation gets removed from all US watch lists.
Taiwan's successes against piracy of music, videos, software and other intellectual property rated nevertheless received praise from the US trade office.
"The United States notes Taiwan's strong efforts and significant strides in improving its IPR regime this past year," the US trade office's annual report to Congress said.
These included "the passage of legislation to create a specialized IPR court, the creation of an IP section at the Special Prosecutor's Office, increased numbers of raids and seizures of pirated optical media, counterfeit pharmaceuticals, counterfeit luxury goods and increased arrests of IPR infringers," the report said.
But the US urged Taiwan to continue efforts to fight counterfeiting and Internet piracy, pass legislation to provide liability for Internet service providers and to "address copyright piracy on peer-to-peer [P2P] networks."
The US also asked Taiwan to improve IPR enforcement; to dedicate more resources to Internet piracy enforcement, especially on the education ministry's TANet; to take enforcement action against copyright violations on or near universities; and to consider imposing stronger criminal penalties for IPR infringement.
In response, Chen said an amendment to the Copyright Law (
The amendment stipulates that P2P operators who provide unauthorized content and benefit from the service will be sentenced up to two years in prison, or fined less than NT$500,000 (US$15,000).
If the operators continue to run the illegal businesses after conviction, they will be forced to shut down.
Despite the absence of legislation, Taiwan now has no major commercial P2P operators after its two biggest music file-sharing sites -- kuro.com.tw (
While inclusion on the US watch list does not present Taiwan with the danger of trade sanctions, it is a factor the US will use in its decisions on Taiwan's bid for a free-trade agreement with the US, which has been a priority issue for President Chen Shui-bian's (
Bilateral talks in recent years under the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement have substantially narrowed trade frictions in other areas, but Taiwan's failure to make a big improvement in its intellectual property rights record has remained a persistent concern of US industry.
The decision to keep Taiwan on the list, where it has been since 2001, was not unexpected.
It was heralded in February when the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), the trade association representing the sectors of the US industry that suffers from piracy, recommended that the US trade office keep Taiwan on the list.
But in an action that went counter to the IIPA recommendations, the US trade office declined to commit itself to reconsidering its decision in the fall.
In the past, the US trade office has faithfully followed IIPA recommendations and the decision not to hold a so-called "out-of-cycle-review" later this year to reconsider Taiwan's status probably marked the first time the IIPA's recommendations have not been followed.
It was not immediately clear why the US trade office decided against a review in the fall, but in a press release discussing its decisions, the IIPA expressed the hope that the US government would "keep close watch on developments in the five ... countries for which IIPA recommended OCRs [out-of-cycle-reviews]," and for which the trade agency declined to order such reviews, including Taiwan.
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