Taiwan Remains on US Special 301 Watch List.

TIPO and Bureau of Foreign Trade Expressed Regret about the US Decision of Keeping Taiwan on the Watch List.  

 

US Trade Representative (USTR) on April 29, 2006 (April 28, 2006 Eastern US time) announced the investigation report on “Special 301” and put 48 trading partners on the List, and 34 members, including Taiwan, are on the Watch List. 

 

In the report, the US government expressly confirmed and exalted Taiwan’s efforts and implementations in IPR protection, which include amendment to the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act that prolongs the term of data exclusivity to 5 years, intensive and expansive raids against pirated CDs, counterfeit drugs, and counterfeit goods, and also indictments against P2P providers in infringement cases.  The US government, however, still expects Taiwan to reinforce strike on the manufacture of pirated CDs, Internet infringement, and counterfeits transshipment on borderline.  Also, the US government anticipates more endeavors on prevention of Internet infringement on campus and on the development of IP Court establishment.  With a view to Taiwan’s improvement, the US government keeps Taiwan on “Watch List”. 

 

TIPO indicated that to construct a well-rounded and healthier IPR protection environment is the government’s resolute and established policy.  In order to effectively impede Internet infringement, IPR Police Team has already instituted “Joint Internet Infringement Task-force (JIST)”.  In the whole 2005 year, JIST had uncovered a total of 1428 IPR infringement cases, among which Internet infringement made up 769 cases (54%), marking an increase from 144 cases by 434% in 2004.  Such a jump in the number of uncovered cases demonstrates Taiwan’s exertions against Internet infringement.  Besides, to cut the source of pirated CDs, Joint Optical Disk Enforcement Taskforce (JODE) under the Ministry of Economic Affairs has been inspecting CDs plants, and the result thereof is that 1193 CDs plants had been uncovered in 2005 (685 uncovered during the day and 508 at night), which represents an increase from 1067 by 11.81% in 2004.  In particular, there had been no cases of severe circumstance uncovered during the whole year of 2005, which obviously shows that the long-standing problem of CDs plants’ illegal manufacture of pirated goods has been contained with effects.  In addition, for the issue related to IPR protection on campus, the Ministry of Education has put more strength in the administration of text books copying and TANet infringement, and also in 2006 begins to include the IPR protection performance as an event of campus evaluation; in the meantime, the contact window is set up to strengthen the interaction and communication with right holder groups. 

 

The Legislative Yuan also on April 24, 2006 passed the first reading of the amendment to the Copyright Law, which provides punishment on the providers who are involved in copyright infringement to gain profits by illegally providing platform, software, and other techniques.  With this amendment, Internet infringement will be contained and eradicated more effectively.  In addition, IP Court has been operated since March 2006.  

 

In accordance with IIPA’s report, the piracy rates in major fields of Taiwan all substantially drop because of Taiwan’s successive and stringent IPR protection efforts:  The report reveals a fall in piracy rate from 36% in 2004 to 26% in 2005 in music, 43% in 2004 to 42% in 2005 in business software, 63% in 2004 to 51% in 2005 in game software.  Likewise, it is estimated that there is a decrease by 10% in the amount of loss in books.  The foregoing figures uphold and sustain Taiwan’s efforts in IPR protection and the actualized effects have won Taiwan positive praises from domestic and foreign holder right groups.  For such reasons, TIPO is unsatisfied with the US’ decision to keep Taiwan on “Watch List”. (2006.04)

/CCS