New Delhi: India is facing flak for having lenient laws towards intellectual property. The country, along with neighbouring China, is being criticized by the US government for being amongst the worst nations at snuffing out counterfeit goods.
The office of US Trade Representive Ambassador Michael Froman brought this in notice in the annual Special 301 report that India and China had lax attitudes toward intellectual property law enforcement.
A report on The Register notes that the American trade body cited the two Asian countries for failing to stem the flow of knock-off products such as pharmaceuticals, software, and digital media. Inadequate legislation and lax enforcement of the laws were cited as the issues for the countries.
The US scorn comes as the nation is itself struggling to overhaul intellectual property laws. Trafficking of fake goods in India is estimated to cost foreign and domestic companies close to $11.9 billion annually, as the country struggles to keep people from pirating movies and defeating DRM software at home and abroad.
In China, theft of trade secrets remains the concern. These thefts occur inside and outside China’s boundaries for the competitive advantage of Chinese state-owned and private companies. This is not the first time China has taken heat for failing to protect intellectual property. A 2013 report estimated that Chinese IP theft cost US companies more than $300billionin lost exports.
The US has urged India to enact anti-camcording legislation; model its statutory license provisions relating to copyrighted works on the standards of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works; ensure that collecting societies are licensed promptly and able to operate effectively; and provide additional protections against signal theft, circumvention of technological protection measures, and online copyright piracy.
Other nations on the Priority Watch List were Algeria, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Indonesia, Kuwait, Pakistan, Russia, Thailand, Ukraine and Venezuela.
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