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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 their implementation and any future reform of Canada's copyright laws.
Chile: While generally strong, Chile's intellectual property laws are not yet consistent with TRlPS standards. For example, the term of patent protection falls short of the 20-year standard mandated by TRIPS, the trademark law is deficient in a number of areas and computer software is not clearly protected as a "literary work." We understand that the Chilean Government intends to address the outstanding problems prior to January 1, 2000. Inadequate enforcement of copyrights and trademarks remains a serious concern, as does the large backlog of pending patent applications. We look to the Government of Chile to make great strides in eliminating this backlog and to bring its legal regime into compliance with TRIPS in 1999.
Colombia has ratified, but not yet fully implemented TRIPS, and does not yet provide adequate and effective intellectual property protection. Although Colombia has made efforts to improve copyright enforcement, piracy is widespread with music piracy having worsened and counterfeit CDs flooding the market. Colombia has still to resolve the major issue USTR highlighted in its December out-of-cycle review -- failure to license legitimate pay television operators and pursue pirate operators. However, Colombia's Attorney General has reportedly begun legal action against 108 community television operators, and the failed November 1998 cable-TV licensing process is scheduled for completion in July 1999. President Pastrana recently took the welcome step of issuing a directive to all government and educational institutions to protect copyrighted material and use of software. We urge Colombia to improve its enforcement efforts and bring its laws into full TRIPS compliance by January 1, 2000. We will conduct an out-of-cycle review of Colombia's progress toward addressing these concerns in September 1999.
Costa Rica: Costa Rica will remain on the Watch List. Enforcement of copyright law has become a major problem for U.S. industry. The Costa Rican Government has failed to take sufficient enforcement actions against motion picture and sound recording piracy. Poor and cumbersome enforcement procedures have also adversely affected the U.S. business software industry, particularly in San Jose. In addition to copyright protection problems, Costa Rican patent law is deficient in several key areas. Patents are granted for a non-extendable 12-year term from the date of the grant (for pharmaceuticals, agricultural chemicals, fertilizers, and beverage/food products, the term is only one year). A new patent law is being drafted to bring Costa Rica in line with its obligations under the WTO TRIPS Agreement. We look to Costa Rica to implement its TRIPS obligations no later than January 1, 2000. As a major beneficiary of the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act, it is incumbent upon the Government of Costa Rica to offer adequate and effective protection for intellectual property.
Czech Republic: The Czech Republic has not made sufficient progress to address the lack of adequate and effective protection for intellectual property rights since last year's Special 301 review. Czech law does not provide an effective ex parte search procedure necessary to guarantee that evidence is not destroyed before commencement of civil litigation over alleged
