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 take steps to correct the patent law, and received the President's assurances that the Dominican Republic would abide by its international obligations. We urge the Dominican Republic to build on the momentum that it has created through the appointment of the two new commissions, and work expeditiously to correct the remaining patent law deficiencies by the end of the year. There have been substantial improvements in the copyright area, especially with the passage of a TRIPS-conforming law and the impressive enforcement efforts on the part of the National Copyright Office (ONDA). Nonetheless, there continues to be concern with respect to the enforcement of the new copyright law, and enforcement coordination between ONDA and the police remains poor.

 Egypt's copyright law appears inconsistent with its obligations under the TRIPS Agreement, and pending amendments may not sufficiently address all of the law's weaknesses. The current draft of the pending bill does not make clear that sound recordings are protectable works, nor does it provide express retroactive protection for such works still under copyright in the country of origin. The bill also does not provide for civil ex parte search orders. Moreover, we were concerned by Egypt's approval of fraudulent licenses to distributers of pirated copyright works, which facilitated pirate operations while hampering legitimate producers. We are heartened that the Egyptian Government has recently begun taking steps to prevent approval of such licenses and has, in fact, terminated some licenses that were approved in error; we hope this trend continues. Egypt's patent law also does not appear to comply with TRIPS. It provides for only a 15-year patent term, excludes from patentability substances produced by chemical processes intended for use in food or medicine, and has overly-broad compulsory licensing provisions. Egypt has tabled a new draft patent law, but this new law also appears inadequate. For example, it requires that patent applications for medicines be adjudicated by the Ministry of Health rather than the Patent Office, thus treating medical patent applications differently than applications from other fields of technology, in seeming contravention of TRIPS. The United States is very concerned by recent reports that the Egyptian Government has granted marketing approval for generic copies of patent-protected drugs based on the confidential test data submitted by the innovator firms. This appears to violate both the TRIPS Agreement and Egypt's own Prime Ministerial Decree 2211, which is meant to protect such test data. On enforcement, the Egyptian Government took strong steps during 2000 against software piracy, including police raids and convictions. Nonetheless, piracy of audio and video CDs and other products remains widespread and virtually all entertainment software on the market are pirated. We will continue to aid the Egyptian Government in complying with its TRIPS obligations through our SIPRE (Strengthening Intellectual Property Rights in Egypt) program.

 At the conclusion of the 1999 Special 301 review, the United States initiated a WTO dispute settlement case against the EU, based on the apparent TRIPS deficiencies in EU Regulation 2081/92, which governs the protection of geographical indications (GIs) for agricultural products and foodstuffs in the EU. In addition, the Regulation permits dilution and cancellation of trademarks, even when a GI is created later in time. The United States requested consultations regarding this matter on June 1, 1999, and numerous consultations have been held since then. At the most recent consultations, held in February 2001, the EU indicated that it would consider