The Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) recognized Taiwan’s efforts to enhance trade secret protections, while citing online piracy as an ongoing concern, in an annual report released on Wednesday.
This year’s “Special 301” report, which monitors intellectual property (IP) protection and enforcement among US trading partners, was the second to be published under US President Joe Biden’s administration by US Trade Representative Katherine Tai (戴琪).
In the report, the USTR identified Taiwan, along with the EU and Chile, as partners that have recently strengthened or are working to strengthen their trade secret regimes.
Photo: Ritchie Bo. Tongo, EPA-EFE
While the report did not cite any specific examples, the legislature has amended a range of intellectual property laws as part of its bid to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact.
The US and Taiwan also met under the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement framework in June last year to discuss “developments related to the enforcement of trade secrets protections, copyright legislation and digital piracy,” the report said.
However, the report identified Taiwan as one of 16 markets with “notable” levels of streaming content piracy through illicit streaming devices and illicit Internet protocol television service apps.
In addition to Taiwan, the other markets included China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, Canada and Brazil.
China was also named as a manufacturing hub for piracy devices.
The USTR maintained China’s place on a “priority watch list” — along with Argentina, Chile, India, Indonesia, Russia and Venezuela — of countries with major deficiencies in their IP protections.
Although China passed a number of legal reforms last year to strengthen such protections, it has yet to address issues such as weak enforcement channels, and a lack of transparency and judicial independence, the report said.
The USTR also urged China to provide “a level playing field” in the area of IP protections, to refrain from requiring or pressuring technology transfers to Chinese companies, and to open to foreign investment and “embrace open and market-oriented policies.”
Washington will continue to monitor Beijing’s progress in implementing its commitments under the “phase one” trade agreement that the two countries signed in January 2020, the report said.
Leading Taiwanese bicycle brands Giant Manufacturing Co (巨大機械) and Merida Industry Co (美利達工業) on Sunday said that they have adopted measures to mitigate the impact of the tariff policies of US President Donald Trump’s administration. The US announced at the beginning of this month that it would impose a 20 percent tariff on imported goods made in Taiwan, effective on Thursday last week. The tariff would be added to other pre-existing most-favored-nation duties and industry-specific trade remedy levy, which would bring the overall tariff on Taiwan-made bicycles to between 25.5 percent and 31 percent. However, Giant did not seem too perturbed by the
AI SERVER DEMAND: ‘Overall industry demand continues to outpace supply and we are expanding capacity to meet it,’ the company’s chief executive officer said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported that net profit last quarter rose 27 percent from the same quarter last year on the back of demand for cloud services and high-performance computing products. Net profit surged to NT$44.36 billion (US$1.48 billion) from NT$35.04 billion a year earlier. On a quarterly basis, net profit grew 5 percent from NT$42.1 billion. Earnings per share expanded to NT$3.19 from NT$2.53 a year earlier and NT$3.03 in the first quarter. However, a sharp appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar since early May has weighed on the company’s performance, Hon Hai chief financial officer David Huang (黃德才)
NVIDIA FACTOR: Shipments of AI servers powered by GB300 chips would undergo pilot runs this quarter, with small shipments possibly starting next quarter, it said Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), which supplies artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp chips, yesterday said that AI servers are on track to account for 70 percent of its total server revenue this year, thanks to improved yield rates and a better learning curve for Nvidia’s GB300 chip-based servers. AI servers accounted for more than 60 percent of its total server revenue in the first half of this year, Quanta chief financial officer Elton Yang (楊俊烈) told an online conference. The company’s latest production learning curve of the AI servers powered by Nvidia’s GB200 chips has improved after overcoming key component
UNPRECEDENTED DEAL: The arrangement which also includes AMD risks invalidating the national security rationale for US export controls, an expert said Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) have agreed to pay 15 percent of their revenue from Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) chip sales to the US government in a deal to secure export licenses, an unusual arrangement that might unnerve both US companies and Beijing. Nvidia plans to share 15 percent of the revenue from sales of its H20 AI accelerator in China, a person familiar with the matter said. AMD is to deliver the same share from MI308 revenue, the person added, asking for anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The arrangement reflects US President Donald Trump’s consistent effort to engineer
RSS