USTR Suspends Ukraine IP Rights Investigation

The United States has suspended a trade review of Ukraine's intellectual property practices due to Russia's invasion and removed oil exporters Saudi Arabia and Kuwait from watch lists due to improvements in their protections of IP rights.

The U.S. Trade Representative's office said in its annual "Special 301" investigation of trading partners' intellectual property rights protections that it is keeping China on a Priority Watch List" due to concerns raised about the effectiveness of amendments to its patent, copyright and criminal laws.

Ukraine had previously had previously been on the USTR's Priority Watch List -- indicating the highest level of concern -- due to the use of unlicensed software by Ukrainian government agencies, lack of an effective means to combat widespread online copyright infringements, and concerns about the collection of royalties.

"However, due to Russia's premeditated and unprovoked further invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Special 301

review of Ukraine has been suspended," USTR said in the report.

USTR also said it had removed Saudi Arabia from its priority watch list due to steps that the country had taken to publish IP enforcement procedures, improve judicial training in the area and combat counterfeit and pirated goods and online content.

It said it removed Romania, Kuwait and Lebanon from the lower-priority Watch List due to IP enforcement improvements, but said it would conduct an out of cycle review of Bulgaria to assess whether Sofia addresses deficiencies in investigating and prosecuting online piracy cases, "particularly its failure to adopt evidence sampling in criminal cases."