China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and the Philippines led a blacklist of Asian copyright violators released Friday by the United States, which sought tough action to combat piracy and counterfeiting of US goods. One country, Ukraine, remained in the category of worst offenders on copyright infringement as a "priority foreign country," with 75 million dollars in sanctions still in place, the office of the US Trade Representative said. A total of 14 nations were placed on a "priority watch list," with China added to the list this year.
The others included Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela.
The USTR said that while infringement levels remained "unacceptably high" throughout China, in spite of Beijing's efforts to reduce them, there was some progress in the region in protecting intellectual property rights.
It cited Indonesia and the Philippines, which recently passed legislation to combat optical media piracy and Malaysia and Taiwan, which had begun to take more enforcement actions, as well as India's passage of a new law to improve patent protection.
Acting Trade Representative Peter Allgeier indicated that India might receive benefits for taking some firm measures.
"India took a significant step to improve its patent protection regime this year with passage of a new Patent Amendment," Allgeier said. "We will closely monitor implementation of the amendment, and we are considering actions that would acknowledge progress in this area."
The USTR elevated China to the "priority watch list" because of "serious concerns about China's compliance with its obligations" under the World Trade Organisation rules and joint commitments.
Economies on the list do not provide an adequate level of protection or enforcement of intellectual property rights, or market access for persons relying on that protection. The USTR uses a three-step warning list to designate countries according to the degree of abuses.
The priority watch list is the second most serious of the three, below "Priority Foreign Countries," which China was listed on in 1994 but then removed after striking a bilateral agreement with the US government.
This year's "Special 301" report on the adequacy and effectiveness of protection for intellectual property was based on an annual review under the section of US law for which it is named.
Among the 36 trading partners on the "watch list" - which entails "bilateral attention to address underlying IPR problems" - were South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
South Korea was lowered from the priority watch list in 2004.
This year's report also announced so called "out-of-cycle" review for seven countries, including the Philippines and Indonesia.