萬國法律事務所

The United States has announced that although Taiwan has made substantial gains against infringements of intellectual property rights, the US nonetheless still deems Taiwan’s protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights insufficient, and as a result, Taiwan shall remain on the “watch list” of nations for at least one more year.

The US Trade Representative Office recently released is annual report on global intellectual property rights trends, and has determined that Taiwan will stay on the watch list under the US “Special 301” trade law.  Taiwan will remain on the watch list despite recent high praise received from US trade officials for making “significant” progress against intellectual property rights piracy.

The decision to retain Taiwan on the watch list was expected, as a good number of influential US companies representing the computer, entertainment, publishing and other industries had been complaining that piracy of their products in Taiwan still cost them millions of dollars annually in lost sales.  These companies, which each year provide their opinion regarding the state of Taiwan’s intellectual property rights protection and enforcement, had recommended that Taiwan remain on the watch list.  The US Trade Representative Office relies heavily on the recommendations of these companies and industry associations when making its yearly determination.

Until January of 2006, Taiwan was on the "priority watch list," but was moved to the watch list as Taiwan pushed new laws and enhanced enforcement resulted in a reduction in counterfeiting and piracy.  Taiwan’s government was hoping, however, that Taiwan would be removed from all of the US lists this year.

While not taking Taiwan off the lists, the US Trade Representative Office did acknowledge several areas where Taiwan has made progress this past year.  Specifically, the US praised the conviction of the managers of the Internet file-sharing service Kuro for criminal copyright infringement, which was the first criminal conviction of a peer-to-peer service in any jurisdiction in the world.  The Taiwan court fined the three principals of Kuro the amount of NT$ 3 million (approximately US$ 94,000) and sentenced them to prison for terms of as much as three years.

In addition, the US acknowledged Taiwan's recent endeavors to improve its intellectual property rights protection regime, which includes the more frequent use of raids and seizures of pirated optical media, counterfeit drugs and fake luxury goods.

The US also noted quite favorably that Taiwan has amended its pharmaceutical law to provide a five-year term of protection against the unfair use of undisclosed data that companies are required to submit when applying for marketing approval in Taiwan.

The US encouraged Taiwan to continue with the progress, while warning that the US will continue to monitor the manufacturing of counterfeit optical media and significant Internet piracy, as well as the unauthorized use of copyrighted materials, especially on government and university computer networks.  Further, the US requested Taiwan to enhance enforcement of intellectual property rights and establish a special intellectual property court.  Finally, the US commented that Taiwan needs to do more to increase the effectiveness of its border enforcement against the transshipment of counterfeits, to consider legislation to deal with ISP liability, to make criminal sanctions more severe and to further increase the scope of copyright protection.