With regard to cable and satellite broadcasting of copyrighted television programming, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines currently maintain a statutory licensing regime that includes a requirement to pay royalties to rights holders. Rights holders assert, however, that they have not received royalty payments from any company in any country in the region, with the notable exception of payments made in 2013 by the Government of the Bahamas. Others in the region – including Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, Dominica, Montserrat, Saint Maarten, and the Turks and Caicos Islands – do not maintain statutory licensing regimes, and reportedly fail to intercede when unauthorized companies intercept and retransmit copyrighted content without remuneration. Again, it is important to note that some of these cable companies are currently or formerly government-owned and operated.
The United States urges these governments to address these issues, and looks forward to engaging on these challenges with the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM), the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), and their member governments.
U.S. concerns with respect to music licensing and unauthorized and uncompensated retransmission of copyright-protected content are not limited to Caribbean markets. We will also engage with other trading partners whose markets present similar challenges.
Government Use of Software
Under Executive Order 13103 issued in September 1998, U.S. Government agencies maintain policies and procedures to ensure that they use only authorized business software. Pursuant to the same directive, USTR has undertaken an initiative to work with other governments, particularly in countries that are modernizing their software systems or where concerns have been raised, to stop unauthorized government use of software. Considerable progress has been made under this initiative, leading to numerous trading partners' mandating that only authorized, legitimate software may be used by their government bodies. Further work on this issue remains with certain trading partners, such as China, Costa Rica, India, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Ukraine, and Vietnam. The United States urges trading partners to adopt and implement effective and transparent procedures to ensure legitimate governmental use of software.
Trademark Issues and Domain Name Disputes
Trademarks help consumers distinguish a company's products and services from competing products and services, and thereby serve a critical source identification role. The goodwill represented in a company's trademarks is often one of the company's most valuable business assets. However, in numerous countries legal and procedural obstacles exist to securing and enforcing trademark rights. Additionally, many countries lack transparency and consistency in administrative registration procedures. In other countries, governments often do not provide the full range of internationally-recognized trademark protections. For example, dozens of countries do not offer a certification mark system for use by foreign or domestic industries. The lack of a certification mark system can make it more difficult to secure protection for products with a quality or characteristic that consumers associate with the product's geographic origin.
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