Why is it in the news?
- USTR puts India on ‘priority watch list’ on ‘Intellectual Property’ concerns
The office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) has decided to continue to keep India on its Priority Watch List.
What is this report?
- Under Section 301 of the US Trade Act, the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) prepares a list of countries whose Intellectual Property right regime (IPR) has a negative impact on American products.
- Among such countries,special attention given to two groups which are (a)Priority watch list countries in which US uses carrot policy to incentivize IPR reforms such as funding,training,capacity building, bilateral exchanges and conferences and (b)Priority foreign countries in which US sticks to the policy to force IPR reforms such as putting trade sanctions, approaching WTO dispute resolution.
Recent report
- The USTR has identified 11 countries on its Priority Watch List’ which include India, China, Indonesia, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela among others.
- USTR has said that these countries will be subjected to increased bilateral engagement with the US to address Intellectual Property (IP) concerns.
- USTR in its report has also said that it had kept India under the watch list because of (a) Intellectual property (IP) challenges faced by US companies in India (b) insufficient enforcement actions (c) copyright policies that do not properly incentivise the creation and (d) out dated and insufficient trade secrets legal framework.
