Dan Glickman, chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, said on Wednesday that although the organization had not received any confirmation from the Chinese government that an official ban on the import of US films was in place, "the indicators are strong that our information is correct".
"If such action has been taken, or is in the process of being taken, it would represent an enormous step backwards in terms of China’s efforts to develop a strong and most importantly, legitimate film exhibition and distribution market," he said.
One of the two WTO cases that the US initiated in April concerned barriers to the importation of books, music videos and films (DS363). China limits the number of foreign films shown in its cinemas to around 20 each year. The US government claims that these restrictions allow pirated versions of unapproved films to dominate the markets because official supply doesn’t meet consumer demand.
On Tuesday the Office of the United States Trade Representative released the 2007 Report to Congress on China’s TRIPs Compliance. The report repeats last year’s criticisms of China’s "chronic underutilization of deterrent criminal remedies".
While praising China’s accession to WIPO’s internet treaties and the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the US on IP enforcement, it stated that "China decided in other ways to limit its cooperation because of dissatisfaction with the United States’ decision to use the WTO dispute settlement mechanism".
USPTO director Jon Dudas made the same complaint at a roundtable in Beijing in October.
This week US trade representative Susan Schwab and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez were in Beijing to meet Chinese vice-premier Wu Yi for the 18th US-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade.
In a fact sheet the USTR said that China and the US had agreed to exchange information on Customs’ seizures of counterfeit goods and to cooperate to counter the problem of the misuse of company names, whereby Chinese companies register names that incorporate trade marks and trade names owned by US companies without having any legal authority to do so.
But in the signing ceremony, of the 11 memorandums or agreements signed, none concerned intellectual property.
