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Baucus Unveils Trio Of 'Fast Track' Bills
by Maureen Sirhal
Reaffirming his commitment to free trade, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., last week introduced legislation to provide limited presidential trade-negotiating authority to President Bush for pursuing free-trade agreements with Australia, New Zealand and South Korea.
"Trade agreements must address the full range of issues from guaranteeing national treatment and market access to protecting intellectual property, from promoting electronic commerce to ensuring that countries do not gain unfair advantage by lowering labor and environmental standards," Baucus said in a statement.
The bills -- S. 935 for Australia, S. 943 for New Zealand and S. 944 for South Korea -- would grant limited "fast track" authority to Bush and give Congress only an up-or-down vote, with no amendments, on any deals reached with the three countries. Trade deals could prove troublesome without such authority because of the division in Congress over whether trade deals should address environmental and labor conditions.
Baucus said the solution to the dispute over labor and the environment is to pursue narrow, bilateral trade deals rather than "sweeping, multilateral agreements" such as the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. He cited recent U.S. agreements with Chile and Jordan as models for achieving a trade consensus.
"Our trade policy seems to have become so focused on sweeping multilateral agreements that we ignore other avenues to trade liberalization, much to the detriment of U.S. competitiveness," Baucus said.
EU Official Reaffirms Need for Tough Intellectual Property Protections
A top European official on Tuesday touted the need for increased protection of intellectual property and highlighted the growing framework that the European Union continues to build in order to meet the demands for intellectual property protection in the Internet age.
Frits Bolkestein, directorate-general of the European Commission's Internal Market, said in a speech before the Irish Exporters Association in Dublin that the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) are a necessity in the new economy. He also said the European Union has made progress in expanding its plans to harmonize laws that govern trademarks, patents and copyright protections.
"There is both an increase in the demand for and supply of intellectual property protection," Bolkestein said. "IPR is no longer considered a technical issue exclusively of interest to experts. It has become a highly topical political issue."
The Trademark Directive, adopted in December 1989, seeks to harmonize the level of protection EU member states grant to trademark holders. As part of the directive, the European Union in 1993 adopted the community trademark system, which created a singular system for the filing trademarks in the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market. Since 1996, some 200,000 trademark applications have been filed, and about 100,000 have registered, Bolkestein said.
The European Commission is also making progress on a proposal for a community-wide patenting system, similar to the trademark mechanism.
Bolkestein said the commission, the regulatory arm of the European Union, and the European Union at large continue to support the work of the World Intellectual Property Organization "to solve conflicts between trademarks and Internet domain names." He added that the commission intends to develop a "code of conduct," to reduce instances of cyber squatting.
Malaysia Pushing For Internet Code
Malaysia is considering an Internet "code of content," the official Bernama news agency said this week.
"We are not amending or creating a new law, but we are looking at the code of content to be introduced soon," the agency said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. "We are studying the cyber laws in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, China and Singapore."
But the agency denied that Malaysia is moving toward censorship on the Web. Citing the need to contain the growing amount of pornography and false information, Chia Kwang Chye, parliamentary secretary for the Energy, Communications and Multimedia Ministry, said the proposed voluntary code would cover the uploading of information on Internet servers in Malaysia and outline general guidelines on the sensitivities of the multi-religious society.
Hackings Rise In The Rising Sun
Japanese officials are reporting a huge increase in political hackings, the Associated Press reported this week.
Some 650 sites have been assaulted this year. A computer virus in May alone sent the number skyrocketing to more than 250 cases.
Last year, only 63 Japanese sites were attacked.
Economics, Tech Officials To Visit Washington
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington this week hosts Janusz Steinhoff, Poland's deputy prime minister for economics. Steinhoff will deliver a briefing on the country's progress to privatize various industries and its development strategies as the nation prepares for entry into the European Union.
Meanwhile, JTI Inc., a business consulting firm, will host a delegation of representatives from Dortmund, Germany, in Washington next week to facilitate meetings with information technology companies, primarily in the software sector. Dortmund and its surrounding region has developed into a hub for e-commerce companies in the large German market and is home to more than 100,000 companies, including 100 of the largest German corporations.
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