EFF Slams USTR Special 301 Report on 'Unfair' IP Standards

The Electronic Frontier Foundation partnered with several countries, including Russia and Vietnam, to “defend” against their being “unfairly bullied” by the U.S. Trade Representative’s annual Special 301 report, said an EFF blog post Monday. The USTR report reviews IP protections and other market practices in foreign countries, highlighting those nations with the most problematic IP standards (see 1502060043). Countries like Russia and Vietnam are being asked to “to adopt failed U.S.-style copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret rules,” said EFF. “This would be absolutely fair enough, if the standards by which the other countries were assessed were globally-agreed standards, and if their adherence to those standards were assessed objectively, using a consistent and predictable methodology,” it said: “But they're not; rather, the USTR has free reign to castigate its trading partners for whatever reasons it can come up with.” The "mere listing of a country on the Priority Watch List has applied a heavy extra-legal influence on that country to amend its intellectual property laws and policies to accord with the USTR’s unilateral demand,” said EFF’s filing to the USTR.