Showing posts with label USTR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label USTR. Show all posts

Sunday, April 15, 2018

Intellectual Property and China: Is China Stealing American IP?; Stanford Law School, April 10, 2018

Paul GoldsteinQ&A with Sharon Driscoll, Stanford Law SchoolIntellectual Property and China: Is China Stealing American IP?

"How do you think this challenge is best addressed? How can China and other countries be made to adhere to IP agreements?

Within the confines of trade, that’s a hard question. A friend who oversaw IP policy for the USTR several administrations ago once commented to me that people thought of the USTR as John Wayne rushing into dens of IP iniquity, six-shooters ablaze, when the reality was that he was Archie Bunker shooting off nothing more than his mouth. The US and other countries have achieved important successes under the World Trade Organization’s TRIPs Agreement [Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights] with a dispute resolution process that is far more deliberate than the 301 process. But, although many sober voices have argued for this as the preferable route, it’s far from clear that TRIPs will cover all of the forms of IP appropriation that are the object of the current 301 process, or that the current administration has the will or the patience to follow this avenue. And there are other trade alternatives, such as a bilateral investment treaty with China that could draw on the IP provisions of the so-called TRIPs-Plus free trade agreements with other countries.
Paul Goldstein is the Stella W. and Ira S. Lillick Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. A globally recognized expert on intellectual property law, Paul Goldstein is the author of an influential five-volume treatise on U.S. copyright law and a one-volume treatise on international copyright law."

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Free Trade Disagreement; New York Times, 2/4/14

Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times; Free Trade Disagreement:
"Issa and other members of Congress have voiced concerns that the leaked versions of TPP suggest that the United States is promoting Internet policies that Congress specifically rejected in January 2012, when the House killed the Stop Online Piracy Act...
Joseph Stiglitz – an economist at Columbia and a contributor to these pages – provided a particularly illuminating list of policies that he argues negotiators should explicitly reject, including: mandates for the extensions of patent terms; mandates for the granting of patents on surgical procedures; monopolies of 12 years on test data for biologic damages; increased damages for infringement of patents and copyrights; the requirement of life plus 70 years of copyright protection; and mandates for excessive enforcement measures for digital information and other restrictions on the dissemination of knowledge.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a leading nonprofit advocate of open access on the Internet, argues that under a cloak of secrecy, the TPP,
“raises significant concerns about citizens’ freedom of expression, due process, innovation, the future of the Internet’s global infrastructure, and the right of sovereign nations to develop policies and laws that best meet their domestic priorities. In sum, the TPP puts at risk some of the most fundamental rights that enable access to knowledge for the world’s citizens. The US Trade Rep is pursuing a TPP agreement that will require signatory countries to adopt heightened copyright protection that advances the agenda of the U.S. entertainment and pharmaceutical industries agendas, but omits the flexibilities and exceptions that protect Internet users and technology innovators.”