The Trans-Pacific Partnership will help U.S. technology companies access expanded markets, CompTIA said in a news release Monday. Executive Vice President-Public Advocacy Elizabeth Hyman said TPP will promote “strong and balanced” protections for copyright and related rights, and will protect against locality requirements that direct companies to establish local data storage facilities, which could deplete the efficiency and economic benefits of the Internet. “We understand that this agreement negotiated among twelve countries could not accomplish all the needs of U.S. businesses. Accordingly, we encourage USTR to continue to work to further allow cross-border data flows and defend against data localization requirements for the financial services industry," said Hyman. "We urge Congress to move forward to ratify the TPP.”
Additional intellectual property protections are needed -- including those involving "ancillary copyright laws," and patent and intermediary liability protections -- in certain countries, said Internet and communications trade groups during a public hearing Tuesday of the U.S. Trade Representative's Special 301 Subcommittee. The USTR each year identifies "countries that deny adequate and effective protection of intellectual property protection," and recently received written stakeholder comments on the issue (see 1602080061). The public hearing included testimony from representatives of four countries -- Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Egypt and the Ukraine -- detailing their governments' recent efforts to improve IP protections and arguing they should be excluded from the USTR's watch list this year.
President Barack Obama signed into law two much-discussed bills Wednesday -- the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act (HR-644), which contains language permanently extending the Internet Tax Freedom Act, and the Judicial Redress Act (HR-1428). "We take our privacy seriously," Obama said before signing the Judicial Redress Act. "Along with our commitment to innovation, that’s one of the reasons that global companies and entrepreneurs want to do business here. We enforce our privacy laws, unlike a number of other countries. And in fact, just this month, we finished a landmark new agreement called the Privacy Shield, which provides tough new protections to safeguard consumer data, and it gives certainty to thousands of businesses representing hundreds of billions of dollars in trade." Judicial Redress was seen as an important factor in the establishment of the Privacy Shield agreement between the U.S. and the EU. "We’ve also established the first Privacy Council to strengthen protections of people’s personal information and privacy rights across the federal government," Obama said. "We’ve put new laws and policies in place that clarify what we do and what we do not do when it comes to people’s data and our intelligence efforts." Lawmakers attending the signing ceremony were Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said a White House pool report. FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez also attended, as did U.S. Trade Representative Mike Froman and David O'Sullivan, EU ambassador to the U.S.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and five other industry groups jointly urged Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, to work with President Barack Obama’s administration to “safeguard innovation” by preventing IP issues from being mentioned in high-level policy documents at multilateral institutions like the U.N. The other groups signing onto a joint letter to Hatch were the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Foreign Trade Council, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the U.S. Council for International Business. Technical and IP experts within the office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the departments of Commerce and State coordinated to prevent the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), adopted in December, from including IP, the industry groups said in the letter. The Obama administration's work to prevent IP from becoming part of the UNFCCC “thus removes uncertainty that could have discouraged continued investments by U.S. companies in clean technology,” the groups said. Similar challenges to IP protection “are proliferating throughout the UN system, and the approach adopted by the U.S. delegation” during the UNFCCC “could be applied to other UN initiatives,” including the U.N. Technology Facilitation Mechanism, the U.N. High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines and the World Health Organization’s ongoing work on the Framework for Engagement with Non-State Actors, the industry groups said. “Inter-governmental organizations that are discriminatory towards business, or that focus on a limited range of factors potentially inhibiting innovation deployment, undermine evidence-based policy-making and hobble the delivery of solutions to healthcare and other sustainability challenges.”
Tech copyright holders and allies told the U.S. Trade Representative's office of the risk BitTorrent portals, cyberlockers and peer-to-peer (P2P) networks in Asia, Europe and North America pose to industry because of piracy, in comments posted online throughout the week (see 1602080061), 1602090053 and here). Comments on USTR's so-called Special 301 report on countries that infringe on U.S. intellectual property from a group that includes the Entertainment Software Association, MPAA and RIAA cited a September report on cyberlockers, which are centralized file-hosting sites for user-uploaded content and often used to infringe copyrighted material. Online security company NetNames wrote the report, which was commissioned by the Digital Citizens Alliance, a coalition with an advisory board that it said includes union, National Consumers League and tech officials. DCA analyzed 30 cyberlocker sites -- split evenly between streaming and direct download cyberlockers -- saying they collected nearly $100 million in revenue in the past year. Cyberlockers, P2P networks and various physical locations across the globe are havens for piracy and copyright infringement, said the International Intellectual Property Alliance, with members including ESA, the Independent Film & Television Alliance, MPAA and RIAA. “Online content theft poses a significant and ever-evolving challenge,” it said. “Content thieves are taking advantage of a wide constellation of easy-to-use, consumer-friendly online technologies such as direct download and streaming cyberlockers, which, in turn, have given rise to a lucrative form of secondary infringement on the part of ‘linking sites’ that index stolen movie and television content hosted on other sites.” Alibaba-owned Taobao, a Chinese e-commerce company that had faced scrutiny for infringing goods, said it removed 99.23 million allegedly infringing website listings between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30. Almost 94 percent of those takedowns were done “proactively,” it said. More than 33 percent of the takedowns were a result of a “special” campaign between Taobao and 1,208 copyright holders in the U.S., it said. That campaign resulted in penalties for more than 200,000 Taobao merchants, it said. Time Warner's HBO Latin America, meanwhile, focused on the region. It said "many Caribbean and Central American governments often fail to enforce HBO LA’s copyrights and licenses, permitting piracy of HBO LA’s IP [intellectual property] without legal consequence." The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers also said Caribbean countries and China don't always respect IP rights: "Unfortunately, there has been little progress over the past year in the conditions that ASCAP’s members face in these markets."
Technology and Internet industry groups urged the U.S. to continue promoting IP protection among its trading partners, and identified countries that violate existing IP obligations or fail to provide "fair and equitable" market access, in comments filed with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and made public Monday. Stakeholders submitted comments to the USTR in response to the agency's request for written responses to its Special 301 report (see 1602080061), which is meant to "identify countries that deny adequate and effective protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) or deny fair and equitable market access to U.S. persons who rely on intellectual property protection." Commenters also warned of both active and proposed rules by certain global competitors that limit cross-border data flows and encourage digital protectionism.
Trademark holders said some countries don't protect U.S. copyright, and the International Intellectual Property Alliance, which includes MPAA and RIAA, said the U.S. Trade Representative's office should resume classifying Ukraine as a priority country for not protecting U.S. IP. In the filings we were able to get in the runup to last Friday's deadline for comments to USTR, the Trademark Working Group, while not recommending the office add countries to the priority countries list, said Argentina, Brazil, India, the Philippines and Malaysia -- which TWG called the “slows” -- regularly fail to adjudicate oppositions and cancelations in a “reasonable period of time.” IIPA, in comments it released Friday said Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam should be added to USTR's priority watch list. Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Mexico, Switzerland, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates should go on the regular watch list. IIPA members also include the Association of American Publishers, Entertainment Software Association and Independent Television & Film Alliance. Last week's Trans-Pacific Partnership signing was "a timely reminder of the valuable role our government plays in promoting U.S. economic interests abroad, and of the need to seek enforceable commitments from key trading partners to remove impediments to legitimate marketplaces," said IIPA Counsel Steven Metalitz in a news release. "TPP holds the potential to make a critical contribution, along with other trade agreements and Congressionally mandated reviews like the Special 301 Report, to this market-opening drive.” Monday, USTR posted about 30 public comments. The next issue of this publication will report on what tech groups like the Computer & Communications Industry Association, Internet Association and others said.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said it’s seeking comment on its annual special 301 review process on “notorious” IP markets, which identifies “priority” countries where policies allow copyright infringement and other IP rights violations to occur. USTR’s 2015 annual special 301 report didn’t name any country as a “priority foreign country” for IP rights violations but identified China and India among 13 priority watch list countries. USTR placed 24 other countries on its lower-tier watch list (see 1504300061). Comments on the 2016 special 301 review are due Feb. 5, USTR said in Monday’s Federal Register. Foreign governments will have until Feb. 19 to file comments or notices that they intend to testify at a planned March 1 public hearing on the special 301 review, USTR said. The March 1 hearing is at USTR’s Washington, D.C., offices. USTR said it plans to release its 2016 special 301 report around April 30.
The Obama administration hopes the Trans-Pacific Partnership (see 1512150039) will be implemented by the end of January 2018, though several hurdles remain, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said Friday at a CES workshop webcast from Las Vegas. TPP legislation must first pass Congress, where an anti-TPP coalition recently formed, as well as be approved by several other countries’ governments, where signing the agreement into law requires more “gambles” than for this country, Froman said. One workshop attendee, Audio Control CEO Alex Camara, voiced concern that China compulsory certification regulations are unnecessarily complex and difficult, but also expressed excitement about the prospect for more uniform regulations under TPP. Froman said Camara’s was a “very common complaint,” and TPP “won’t necessarily harmonize standards,” but will prevent countries from forcing industry to adopt local standards not in line with international benchmarks. The TPP “builds upon obligations these companies already have to the World Trade Organization,” Froman said. “It goes further and makes sure we can enforce their openness as far as how standards are set, the application of international standards and making sure these are best practices.”
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative released results Thursday of its 2015 Special 301 out-of-cycle review on intellectual property infringement. It focused on the sale of counterfeit goods online, listing 14 online markets alongside physical markets in Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Paraguay and Thailand. USTR cited the difficulties customs authorities face attempting to stop shipments of counterfeit goods sold online, and the growing problem of free trade zones enabling counterfeit activities. Major Chinese online shopping website Taobao again escaped inclusion, after last being listed in 2012. USTR said Taobao parent Alibaba took some enforcement measures over the past year, including “a good-faith product takedown procedure, a three and four strikes penalty system, and an English-language version of the TaoProtect portal to register [intellectual property rights] and submit takedown requests.” But USTR said it's “increasingly concerned” by reports that Alibaba’s enforcement program is “too slow, difficult to use, and lacks transparency.” The report applauded China for its efforts over the past year to examine the problem of counterfeit sales online; a study by that country in November found less than 59 percent of articles sold online last year were genuine. USTR cautioned that large free trade zones have “become enablers for counterfeit activities and are being used as a staging ground to disguise the illicit nature of counterfeit goods, to add infringing trademarks, logos and packaging to products, as well as to conceal the origin of counterfeit goods.” The EU has said counterfeiters are to blame, noted USTR. The issue would be partially addressed by the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, it said. Distribution of counterfeit goods bought online is a major enforcement challenge for customs authorities, said USTR. The report “shines an essential light on the rampant nature of content theft, which diminishes the work of creators, harms consumers through the spread of malware,” MPAA CEO Chris Dodd said in a statement. “As the film and television industry relies on robust copyright frameworks to create and distribute content around the globe, the report is a reminder that it’s important to include strong protections for intellectual property in trade agreements such as the TPP.” USTR’s decision to take “action against the identified markets is a win for both consumers and rights holders, allowing the legitimate foreign market distribution of, and thus greater access to, legal content -- of literary works, music, movies and TV programming, video games, software, and other products and services,” said International Intellectual Property Alliance Counsel Steven Metalitz in a statement.