What Does It Mean That India Is on The US Intellectual Property “Priority Watch List”?

Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, and Venezuela are among the other countries on the Office of the United States Trade Representative’s list.

India, China, Russia, and four other countries were added to the US’s annual ‘Priority Watch List for intellectual property rights and prosecution on Wednesday.

All seven countries this year on the list were also on the previous years.

US Trade Representative Katherine Tai indicated in her “Special 301 Report” on the assessment of the effectiveness of US trading partners’ safety and protection of intellectual property rights that these nations will be the focus of particularly severe bilateral engagement in the next year.

Algeria, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Guatemala, Mexico, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam are among the countries on the Watch List, which require bilateral attention to address underlying IP issues.

The ‘Special 301’ Report is an annual assessment of the state of intellectual property protection and enforcement around the world. For this year’s Special 301 Report, USTR looked at over a hundred trading partners.

According to a press release published by the US Trade Representative, “the examination of Ukraine has been suspended due to Russia’s deliberate and unprovoked additional invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.”