The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has requested comments for the Special 301 Report, which identifies countries that “deny adequate and effective protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) or deny fair and equitable market access to U.S. persons…
Author: Suzanne Zhou Abstract: In April 2014, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) listed India on its Special 301 Priority Watch List, following India’s refusal to grant a patent over the leukemia drug Gleevec and its compulsory licensing of the…
The 2015 Special 301 Report continues a trend, beginning last year, of scrubbing a lot of language that long graced previous reports threatening other countries about WTO TRIPS and other international treaty violations. (See Special 301, A Historical Primer). This could…
[Federal Register Notice from the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Link] …USTR is hereby requesting written submissions from the public concerning foreign countries that deny adequate and effective protection of intellectual property rights or deny fair and equitable market…
[Lawyers Collective, India] As you know, transnational pharmaceutical companies and the US Government are putting pressure on the Indian Government to change India’s IP laws especially the Indian Patents Act, which will make medicines unaffordable to millions of people in…
[Swaraj Paul Barooah, SpicyIP, reposted from with author’s permission] In a very welcome and quick response to USTR’s Special 301 Out of Cycle Review (OCR) process for India that opened for comments a couple of days ago (October 14th), the…
[Gabriel Michael, ‘To Promote the Progress?’ Blog, Link (CC-BY-SA)] My previous post discussed how Special 301′s enforcement mechanism has rarely been used, and is even less likely to be used in the future. But the frequency with which an enforcement mechanism is…
On April 30, the United States Trade Representative released the 2014 Special 301 Report, which fulfills its mandate under the Trade Act (19 U.S.C. § 2242) to identify countries that “deny adequate and effective protection of intellectual property rights, or…
In the weeks leading up to today’s publication of the Special 301 report, Indian officials were reportedly ready to file a challenge to the program in the World Trade Organization. That threat seems to have been avoided by the USTR…
The Office of the US Trade Representative’s 2014 Special 301 Report is expected out shortly. The 301 Report places countries on a watch list for practices the US Government believes reflect “inadequate” intellectual property protection, even when these policies protect…
Resist the U.S. Administration Pressure and Reject the Misleading Allegations of U.S. Business Associations We the undersigned organizations and individuals are writing this letter to urge you to reject the pressure tactics of the United States (US) administration against India…
The United States Trade Representative (USTR) recently announced that it would not seek sanctions against Ukraine following its designation as a Priority Foreign Country in the Special 301 process last year. The notice states that the USTR sticks by its…