[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 169 (Thursday, November 20, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15299-S15300]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. HATCH (for himself and Mr. Leahy):
  S. 1911. A bill to amend the provisions of title III of the Trade Act 
of 1974 relating to violations of the TRIPS Agreement, and for other 
purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, today I introduce an important, bipartisan 
piece of legislation that will amend the Trade Act of 1974 to help 
ensure that America's intellectual property rights are properly 
protected by our trading partners and that disputes between America and 
other governments can be investigated and resolved in a quick and 
sensible manner.
  This bill makes commonsense changes to three important aspects of the 
Trade Act of 1974. First, this bill makes certain that our partners who 
benefit from trade with the United States adequately protect American 
intellectual property. The TRIPS standards (Trade Related Aspects of 
Intellectual Property) that the World Trade Organization uses today in 
order to determine if a country is protecting intellectual property 
laws were written in the early 1990s--before digital piracy had become 
widespread. Our legislation will codify the necessity on the part of 
other nations to keep intellectual property protections current with 
technology.
  In addition, this measure will establish a petition process for 
bringing intellectual property claims against trade partners in the 
Caribbean Basin who fail to enforce intellectual property rights while 
benefiting from profitable trading programs. Under current law, there 
is no provision for parties to petition the United States Trade 
Representative to investigate whether or not one of our Caribbean 
partners is meeting the criterion of ``fair and effective'' enforcement 
of intellectual property rights in order to benefit from special trade 
programs. This legislation invests the USTR with the power to ensure 
that beneficiaries of favorable trading programs will not be rewarded 
for failing to protect intellectual property in a meaningful way.
  Finally, this bill will correct an undesirable and unintended 
technical deficiency of the Trade Act of 1974 when applied to the 
dispute mechanisms of the World Trade Organization. Current

[[Page S15300]]

timelines for investigating intellectual property violations under the 
Trade Act force the USTR to designate certain countries as failing to 
protect intellectual property before a complete investigation can be 
completed and make it virtually impossible to negotiate with that 
country or bring a WTO dispute settlement case in order to resolve a 
dispute. This bill amends Section 301 of the Trade Act to make sure 
that investigations can proceed before policy is made.

                          ____________________