Greece: In 1998, USTR announced the initiation of WTO dispute settlement consultations with Greece and the European Union regarding the high rates of television piracy in Greece. During the course of these consultations, the Government of Greece has taken steps toward addressing this problem, including the passage of additional legislation and the closure of a number of television stations which continued to broadcast programing without authorization. However, Greece has yet to provide assurances that it would implement its new enforcement procedure in a strong and consistent manner, and to take steps to improve the handling of intellectual property cases in the court system for the purposes of resolving this dispute. We look to the Government of Greece to quickly provide these assurances so that this long-standing bilateral irritant can be removed from our bilateral agenda.
Guatemala: Guatemala's Criminal Procedures Code requires that all criminal enforcement be brought as "private actions", making criminal penalties difficult to obtain in cases of copyright infringement. Piracy, including by government agencies, is widespread, and the Government of Guatemala has failed to take effective enforcement action. The U.S. urges Guatemala to honor its WTO TRIPS Agreement commitments to enforce protection of intellectual property.
India: India continues to lack adequate and effective patent protection, failing to comply with the obligations of the TRIPS Agreement in a number of areas, especially with regard to local working requirements, patentable subject matter and exclusive patent rights, term of protection, and protection for test data. Although not required to do so under the TRIPS Agreement until 2005, India has yet to provide patent protection for pharmaceutical and agricultural chemical products. Patent legislation has been drafted but not yet passed. While India's copyright law is generally compliant with the TRIPS Agreement, amendments passed in 1999 undermine TRIPS requirements concerning protection for computer programs. In addition, enforcement against piracy, especially cable piracy, remains a growing concern for U.S. copyright industries, as well as enforcement against imports of pirated products coming from Southeast Asia, for the most part Malaysia. We will continue to consult with the Government of India in the coming months in an effort to encourage it to resolve outstanding TRIPS compliance concerns as soon as possible.
Israel: The Knesset enacted TRIPS omnibus legislation in December 1999 covering a number of areas, including patents, trademarks and copyright. In the last six months, the Government of Israel has allocated additional resources, including hiring new policemen for intellectual property enforcement and funding new prosecutors, to combat widespread copyright infringement. However, we remain very concerned about the unacceptably high rate of piracy of all forms of optical media in Israel. Israel remains a key distribution hub in a multi-country network (including Eastern Europe and Russia) for pirated optical media product, much of which is still manufactured in Israel. We urge the Government of Israel to expedite its ongoing review of CD plant controls, including mandatory use of source identification codes, and to implement quickly effective controls. Other concerns with Israel's intellectual property regime include possible TRIPS deficiencies such as failure to protect adequately confidential test data and to provide criminal penalties for unauthorized end-user copying of computer software, and continued
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