The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) on Friday (April 30) issued its 2021 Special 301 report, a 90-page recap of the state of intellectual property (IP) protection and enforcement with U.S. trading partners.
China, not surprisingly, garnered nine of the pages, with attention on several issues regarding IP protections of movies and other media. The report notes that China agreed to several changes via the Phase One agreement that went into effect in 2020, but the report noted that a review of that deal remains ongoing. That echoes what U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai told lawmakers last week -- that she was eager to kick off the top-to-bottom review of the agreement to determine areas of success and areas where more work is needed.
"The United States-China Economic and Trade Agreement (Phase One Agreement), signed in January 2020, also includes several trade secret commitments to address a number of long-standing concerns in China, including on expanding the scope of civil liability, covering acts such as electronic intrusions as trade secret theft, shifting the burden of producing evidence, making it easier to obtain preliminary injunctions to prevent use of stolen trade secrets, allowing criminal investigations without need to show actual losses, ensuring criminal enforcement for willful misappropriation, and prohibiting unauthorized disclosure of trade secrets and confidential business information by government personnel or third-party experts," the report said.