pirated goods. We urge the Government of Romania to enact an effective criminal ex parte mechanism and civil ex parte authority, and to take appropriate measures to expedite prosecution of infringement cases and provide deterrent penalties. With respect to patents, Romanian law does not yet provide protection for confidential test data as required by the TRIPS Agreement.
Saudi Arabia: As part of its effort to accede to the WTO, Saudi Arabia is currently working with WTO Members to revise its intellectual property laws, including patent and copyright laws, to bring them into conformity with the TRIPS Agreement. With respect to enforcement, the level of activity undertaken by enforcement officials has been insufficient to deter piracy. While the government has been working with the U.S. copyright-based industries to conduct some raids, overall enforcement is not carried out with sufficient regularity and is not accompanied by the appropriate level of publicity and sentences to reduce the level of piracy. The use of unauthorized computer software in government offices also remains a problem. We urge the Government of Saudi Arabia to revise its intellectual property laws to bring them into conformity with the TRIPS Agreement, pursue sustained and deterrent enforcement actions, and begin the process of ensuring that government entities use only authorized software.
Singapore: Overall piracy rates in Singapore decreased slightly during 1999, while the number of police-organized raids increased. However, the open retail availability of pirated CDs, VCDs and CD-ROMs in notorious shopping malls and at stalls continues to be a serious problem, and has not declined significantly in recent years. The United States urges Singapore to continue its anti-piracy consumer education campaign and to reassess the existing "self-help" approach to intellectual property enforcement which shifts to right owners the primary burden and expense of investigating and prosecuting infringement. This system is inadequate to cope with the growing problem of optical disk piracy, as illustrated by the significant levels of conspicuous retail piracy. Further, we remain concerned about insufficient efforts at the border to stop the in-flow and transshipment of infringing articles through Singapore.
Spain: Piracy of business application software continues to account for the majority of losses to the U.S. intellectual property industry in Spain, while piracy and counterfeiting in other areas of intellectual property remain extremely low. Government enforcement activities have increased substantially in recent years with exemplary cooperation from Spanish police. However, recent court decisions have called into question the adequacy of protection for well-known trademarks. In addition, according to industry reports, rates of unauthorized copying of software by organizations for internal use (end-user piracy) remain among the highest in Western Europe. The slow pace of both civil and criminal court proceedings and lack of sufficient criminal penalties is thought to have diluted the impact of the increased raids in certain areas. Nevertheless, the Government of Spain has undertaken to reinforce its already strong commitment to intellectual property protection through specific proposed actions by an inter-ministerial commission. The United States looks forward to the full implementation of these steps and to further reductions in the piracy of business software in Spain.
Taiwan: Taiwan has had mixed results on intellectual property during the last year. On the
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