Page:Special 301 Report 2003.pdf/16

 prosecutions are light, if imposed at all, and do not act as a deterrent to continued illegal trade. In addition to the Stadium problem, optical disc piracy in Poland is on the rise and becoming a greater problem. While Poland has nine operating optical disc plants that produce legitimate products, we are concerned that pirated product may be produced at some of these plants as well. Pirate optical media product is entering Poland via its porous borders, and there are reports of exported pirated product to other Eastern and Western European countries. Given the growing problem of optical disc piracy, legislation is needed to control optical media production in Poland. We urge the Polish Government to swiftly enact an optical disk licensing regime and significantly improve enforcement in the major cities and border towns.

In addition, despite a new pharmaceutical law that came into effect on October 1, 2002, there are still significant shortcomings with the protection of confidential test data submitted for marketing approval. Specifically, the fact that data protection is linked to the existence of a patent is troubling, since these two types of rights, patent protection and data protection are independent of each other. Also problematic is the fact that the period of protection is calculated based on first registration globally, which significantly diminishes the period of protection in Poland, since most pharmaceuticals are first registered outside of Poland.

RUSSIA

Although Russia has made considerable progress in revising several of its intellectual property laws over the past year, Russia still needs to enact amendments to its copyright law to bring it into conformity with TRIPS Agreement requirements. In addition, ineffective enforcement of its laws, in particular, copyright and trademark laws, remains a serious concern. While Russia took some actions in 2002 to improve coordination on IPR enforcement, piracy of works on optical media is a large and growing problem. The number of optical media facilities has doubled since 2001. Further enforcement action, such as the recent Russian Anti-Piracy Program (RAPO) raid on a DVD plant in Russia responsible for up to 30% of the pirated DVDs on the Russian market, will be necessary to continue to combat this problem. Weak protection of intellectual property rights, results in substantial losses to U.S. industry annually. We urge the Russian Government to close immediately the plants producing illegal optical disks; adopt a comprehensive optical media regulatory and enforcement scheme; combat organized crime involvement through specialized enforcement units and the enactment of tough penalties for organized crimes; enact and enforce effective border measures to stop the export and import of counterfeit and pirated products; significantly improve criminal investigations and raids against pirates engaged in commercial distribution of counterfeit and pirated products; and make the necessary legal reforms to the copyright law, and facilitate stronger and more effective IPR enforcement compatible with international standards including those in the TRIPS Agreement and the WIPO internet treaties.

May 1, 2003