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A Sign Of Telecom Hope In China
by Winter Casey
China has agreed to lower the registered capital requirements for U.S. telecommunications providers to operate in China, according to a document released Tuesday by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
The USTR document highlights the outcomes of a high-level dialogue this week between the United States and China to address market access and trade issues. U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, USTR Susan Schwab and Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi attended the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade meeting in Beijing.
"China's capitalization requirements have been a significant barrier to the provision of basic services in China, effectively keeping foreign competition out of the market," said Mike Nunes of the Telecommunications Industry Association. "Depending how much the Chinese government lowers this requirement, we could see greatly increased participation in a rapidly growing market, resulting in increased investment in telecom equipment and infrastructure."
According to Nunes, there are currently no foreign firms providing telecom services in China because the high set-up costs prohibit market entry.
USTR said China also reported on steps it has taken since the last joint commission meeting to improve protection of "intellectual property rights in China, including accession to the World Intellectual Property Organization Internet treaties, a crackdown on the sale of computers not pre-loaded with legitimate software, enforcement efforts against counterfeit textbooks and teaching materials, and joint enforcement raids" by the FBI and Chinese security agencies.
During the meeting this week, the United States and China agreed to exchange information on customs seizures of counterfeit goods. USTR said it wants to see less counterfeit goods being exported by Chinese companies. In 2006, 81 percent of counterfeit seizures by U.S. Customs and Border Protection were from China, the office said.
China also "agreed to strengthen enforcement of laws against company name misuse, a practice in which some Chinese companies have registered legitimate U.S. trademarks and trade names without legal authority to do so."
In an annual report presented to Congress on Tuesday, USTR said "China's enforcement of its laws protecting the intellectual property rights covered by the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (the TRIPS Agreement) has often been ineffective."
The paper added that "U.S. industry reports show no significant reduction in IPR infringement levels again in 2007, confirming that counterfeiting and piracy in China remain at unacceptably high levels and cause serious harm to U.S. businesses across many sectors of the economy."
"Despite anti-piracy campaigns in China and an increasing number of IPR cases in Chinese courts," USTR wrote, "the U.S. copyright industries' most recent estimates indicate that 85 percent to 93 percent of all copyrighted products sold in China in 2006 were pirated, showing little or no improvement over the previous year."
However, according to a Tuesday report from Xinhua News Agency, more than 1,500 large Chinese enterprises have installed copyrighted software since April 2006 following a government push to encourage Chinese companies to opt for legal technology.
The Patent Tally In India
The number of patents in force in India in 2004 was 6,406, according to data posted on India's government Web site from the World Intellectual Property Organization and United Nations.
The 2005 patent number for India was 6,857, India's Minister of State for Industry reported. The total number of patent filings by residents in India per million people was 3.4 in 2004 to 2005.
India's government said it is engaged in efforts to strengthen intellectual property rights. The steps include opening IP offices and an IP management institute, as well as holding seminars on IP issues. The country also made electronic filing of patent applications possible in July.
India has signed agreements to support IP rights with the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the European Patent Office.
In other news, India's larger software and service companies reported higher growth rates when compared with smaller companies in 2007, according to Shakeel Ahmad, the nation's minister of state for communications and information technology.
Reasons for the disparity could be the ability of larger companies to bid for deals that smaller companies do not qualify for, as well as larger companies having more experience and recognized brand value.
Meanwhile, India's government said this week that diplomats and officials in the country will start using electronic passports as part of a project to test the technology. "Based on the experience gained from this pilot project, it is proposed to start issuance of e-passports in the ordinary category," according to Ministry of External Affairs Ashwani Kumar.
New York Times Spurs Online Speech Battle
The debate over how far technology companies should go in resisting repressive governments such as China has moved to the commentary pages of The New York Times.
Earlier this month, the newspaper accused technology companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo of helping those nations limit free speech and citizen access to information. The editorial voiced support for a bill, H.R. 275 that the paper said would "fine American companies that hand over information about their customers to foreign governments that suppress online dissent."
The House Foreign Affairs Committee has approved the legislation that would direct the White House to exert U.S. influence in support of the free flow of information and to deter U.S. businesses from helping countries to enforce Internet censorship.
The legislation would at "least give American companies a solid reason to decline requests for data, but the big Internet companies do not support it," the Times noted. The paper said the fact that big Internet companies do not support the measure "shows how much they care about the power of information to liberate the world."
Steve DelBianco, the executive director of NetChoice, responded to the editorial with a letter in the paper. DelBianco said the editorial misses the point and argued that "leading Internet companies want to do everything possible to protect their customers."
In January a group of stakeholders including academics, businesses and advocacy groups vowed to work to create principles that companies could use when faced with laws, regulations and policies that interfere with human rights. Members of the group include the Center for Democracy and Technology, Google, Microsoft, Vodafone and Yahoo. Yahoo also is a member of NetChoice and has come under fire for providing information about dissidents to Chinese officials.
The real question, DelBianco wrote, is whether "a China with no American content or online services" will better serve the goals of free speech and civil rights than not providing access to such information. He said companies that do business in China must abide by the country's laws. "These companies worry not only about customers going to jail but also their own employees. For example, the head of eBay India was arrested when a user posted an objectionable video to an eBay site," DelBianco wrote.
"A lot of people see this as black or white -- either you are for free expression or you're not -- but when a foreign government can make your site go dark, you start to appreciate the shades or gray," DelBianco added in an interview.
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