In an unusual ruling at the WTO, the Caribbean nation of Antigua on Friday won the right to violate copyright protections on goods like films and music from the US, an award worth up to US$21 million, as part of a dispute between the two countries over online gambling.
The award follows a WTO ruling that Washington had wrongly blocked online gaming operators on the island from the US market at the same time it allowed online wagering on horse racing.
Antigua and Barbuda had claimed damages of US$3.44 billion a year. That makes the relatively small amount awarded on Friday something of a setback for Antigua, which had been struggling to preserve its gambling industry. The US claimed that its behavior had caused US$500,000 damage to the Antiguan economy.
Yet the ruling is significant in that it grants a rare form of compensation: the right of one country, in this case Antigua, to violate intellectual property laws of another, the US, by allowing it to distribute copies of US music, movie and software products.
"That has only been done once before and is, I believe, a very potent weapon," said Mark Mendel, a lawyer representing Antigua, after the ruling. "I hope that the United States government will now see the wisdom in reaching some accommodation with Antigua over this dispute."
Though Antigua is best known for its beaches and tourist attractions, online casinos based there are vital to its economy, serving as its second-largest employer.
By pressing its claim, trade lawyers said, Antigua could set a precedent for other countries to sue the US for unfair trade practices, potentially opening the door to electronic piracy and other dubious practices around the world.
Still, implementation will prove difficult, the lawyers say.
"Even if Antigua goes ahead with an act of piracy or the refusal to allow the registration of a trademark, the question still remains of how much that act is worth," said Brendan McGivern, a trade lawyer with White & Case in Geneva. "The Antiguans could say that's worth US$50,000, and then the US might say that's worth US$5 million -- and I can tell you that the US is going to dog them on every step of the way."
The US has aggressively fought Antigua's claims.
A WTO panel first ruled against the US in 2004, and its appellate body upheld that decision a year later. In April 2005, the trade body gave the US a year to comply with its ruling, but that deadline passed with little more than a statement from Washington that it had reviewed its laws and decided it has been in compliance.
From the start, the US has asserted that it never intended to allow free, cross-border gambling or betting. Those activities are restricted in the US, though some form of gambling is legal in 48 of 50 states.
In May, the US announced that it was rewriting its trade rules to remove gambling services from the jurisdiction of the WTO.
Washington has already agreed on deals with the EU, Canada and Japan to change the treaty but it has yet to reach agreements with several other nations, including Antigua.
On Friday, the US trade representative issued a stern warning to Antigua to avoid acts of piracy, counterfeiting or violations of intellectual property while negotiations are under way.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS