The Bush administration is asking for industry help to measure how well China is keeping its promise to crack down on the piracy of billions of dollars of American goods, US trade officials said on Thursday.
The action follows criticism from Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry that the Bush administration has been too easy on Beijing in the trade area. Beijing's own State Council has estimated the market value of counterfeit goods in China at about $19 billion to $24 billion annually.
The bogus trade affects a wide range of American products ranging from pharmaceuticals to automotive parts.
The US movie, music, software, book and other copyright industries estimate they lost $2.6 billion in China in 2003 from sales of illegal copies of their products.
In April, Chinese officials promised a broad range of actions to reduce the number of copyright, patent and trademark violations and to toughen penalties on companies and individuals that sell pirated and counterfeited goods.
To hold Beijing's feet to the fire, US trade officials said they would conduct an "out-of-cycle review" under Section 301 of US trade law to assess how well China was doing. That investigation could be finished early next year.
Deputy US Trade Representative Josette Shiner told reporters on Thursday she was sending letters to a broad array of business groups asking them to document whether China's enforcement activities are improving or not.
"Our goal is to dramatically reduce incidents of counterfeiting and copyright infringement, trade and patent infringement," Shiner said.
"What I want to hear from American companies is 'our problem has been reduced.'"
Meanwhile, the United States was still waiting for Beijing to issue a promised set of "judicial interpretations" that would lower the threshold for bringing criminal cases in China for counterfeiting or piracy, she said.
Comments
Comments are closed.