On Monday, the United States Trade Representative published its annual "Special 301 Report," detailing the state of intellectual property rights around the world with American trading partners. Not surprisingly, Russia and China (which got over seven pages!) sat atop the list, but Argentina, India, and Canada were also given the honor of being on the "priority watch list."
Canada had the same distinction as part of last year’s report (and the one before that), largely over "long-awaited copyright legislation," and "whether it fully implements the WIPO Internet Treaties, and whether it fully addresses the challenges of piracy over the Internet. The United States also continues to urge Canada to strengthen its border enforcement efforts, including by providing customs officials with ex officio authority to take action against the importation, exportation, and transshipment of pirated or counterfeit goods."
As Wikileaks revealed last year, the United States has been exerting diplomatic pressure against Canada for failure to impose stronger intellectual property legislation.
Argentina, meanwhile, was cited specifically for "piracy over the Internet," while India has faced American criticism over generic knock-offs of pharmaceutical drugs, a case the Indian Supreme Court heard earlier this year.
Or, as the USTR puts it: "The United States continues to encourage India to promote a stable and predictable patent system that can nurture domestic innovation, including by resolving concerns with respect to the prohibition on patents for certain chemical forms absent a showing of increased efficacy."
In addition to being concerned with Indian pharmaceutical patents, Washington, DC is also "expressing concern" that Finnish law "denies adequate protection to many of the top-selling US pharmaceutical products currently on the Finnish market."
So who is Uncle Sam happy with? Malaysia, Korea, and, most notably, Spain—which recently passed the "Sinde Law," again, after pressure from the Feds.