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WATCH LIST
Australia: The Australian Government has introduced legislation to allow the parallel importation of sound recordings. Australia has also introduced legislation that would remove protection from parallel imports for copyrighted labeling and packaging materials associated with other goods. The United States is seriously concerned by efforts to weaken intellectual property protection in Australia and has made these concerns clear to the Government on several occasions. In 1997, the Australian government also announced a new regime governing the protection of test data for pharmaceuticals and agricultural chemicals to come into effect on January 1, 1998. However, legislation setting out these changes has not been passed by Parliament. The United States is concerned that in the case of marketing approval for new uses of existing products or new formulations, Australia continues to allow later applicants to free ride on the data developed and submitted by the first applicant at great expense, putting the first applicant at a competitive disadvantage. The Australian Copyright Act and its interpretation by Australian courts in certain instances has created costly and burdensome obstacles to the enforcement of intellectual property rights against piracy. The U.S. Government is pleased that efforts are being made to address these burdens and that the Government of Australia is considering the grant of patent term extension to account for delays in the regulatory approval process for pharmaceuticals.
Although Bahrain is a member of the WTO, it has not brought its copyright law into compliance with TRIPS and Berne Convention standards. The patent law does provide for pharmaceutical product protection, but only through re-registration of patents filed in the UK. There has been a notable decline in video piracy, but end-user piracy of business software is still almost 90%, according to U.S. industry estimates. The Government announced January 1 that dealers had until the end of February to clear their shelves of pirated product, but the results of that announcement are still unclear. We urge Bahrain to update its intellectual property laws and increase enforcement of them, and to bring them into conformance with its TRIPS obligations by January 1, 2000.
Canada: The Government of Canada has adopted amendments to its copyright law that discriminate against the interests of some U.S. copyright holders. Canada has established a public performance right for record producers and performers. It also has established a levy on blank audio recording media, the revenues from which are intended to compensate performers and producers for the performance and unauthorized home-taping of their works in Canada. The United States remains extremely concerned that U.S. performers and producers are denied national treatment with respect to these provisions and will closely monitor any future reform of Canada's copyright laws.
Chile: While generally strong, Chile's IP laws are not fully consistent with international standards in a number of respects. For example, the term of protection in Chile's patent law is not consistent with TRIPS. In addition, Chile's copyright law does not protect computer software as a literary work and the trademark law is deficient in a number of areas. Enforcement, particularly against counterfeit products remains ineffective. A copyright reform bill to address some of these
