The United States Federal Trade Commission has left Israel in its second-ranking list of companies abusing intellectual property rights, instead of downgrading it to the third list as it had threatened to do.
However, the FTC said it still worries about Israel's policy regarding the protection of drug registration portfolios, and royalties to producers of music CDs played to the general public, Tel-Aviv based HaAretz reported Tuesday.
Israel is one of 52 US trading partners named to the four-level violation blacklist, which includes countries guilty of failing to prevent piracy of movies, music and computer programs, for instance. Its inclusion on the lower-level watch list indicates US concern about failure to uphold property rights in specific cases.
Countries included in the fourth list of worst offenders face trade sanctions by Washington.
Impelled by the US warning, the Israeli government formulated a bill to protect drug registration portfolios.
The bill pleased nobody, irking the local generic drugmakers and failing to satisfy the Americans, who said it did not go far enough. (menareport.com)
© 2004 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
