*WASHINGTON: *The United States has appreciated Pakistan about its positivemomentum in its efforts to reform its IP regime and closed out-of-cyclereviews for the country.
The United States on Friday labelled 36 countries as inadequatelyprotecting U.S. intellectual property rights, keeping China on its“Priority Watch List” for the 14th straight year and adding Canada andColombia to that list for extra scrutiny.
The U.S. Trade Representative’s wide-ranging annual report on globalintellectual property concerns is separate from the Trump administration’s“Section 301” report on Chinese technology transfer practices that hassparked a series of tariff threats between the world’s two largesteconomies.
The so-called “Special 301 Report on Intellectual Property Rights” callsout China for its “coercive technology transfer practices” and “tradesecret theft, rampant online piracy, and counterfeit manufacturing.”
But the report moved Canada from the lower-level “Watch List” to the samepriority list as China because of “poor border enforcement” especially forcounterfeit goods shipped through America’s northern neighbour, andconcerns about intellectual property protection for pharmaceuticals.