U.S. May Petition WTO on Piracy in China

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on April 25, 2006 - 11:38am.

Beijing - The U.S. may take legal action against China at the World Trade Organization (WTO) if the country does not further step up its anti-piracy efforts, Reuters reported on Tuesday. Although China moved recently to shut down several specific pirate disc plants, and committed to compel Chinese PC makers to pre-install legal software, the U.S. still estimates that Chinese piracy and counterfeiting costs U.S. businesses $250 billion in lost sales each year. "We remain consistent and clear in our policies that we consider all trade tools open and available," said Chris Israel, the U.S. Coordinator for International Intellectual Property Enforcement. "We view the commitment from Chinese leaders as meaningful and significant, and the execution of those commitments and meaningful results is really what we are focused on right now."
http://tinyurl.com/mc5qh (Reuters)