On the national level, Brazil established an Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) in March 2001 to combat piracy, and the income tax authority recently began the destruction of a large amount of seized pirated goods. The state of Sao Paolo created a new division within the civil police to deal specifically with piracy and related crimes. Although the United States is encouraged by these actions, Brazil still has not adopted an action plan against piracy, and no lasting improvement in the enforcement situation has occurred at the national level. In particular, the IMC has taken very little action on the anti-piracy front. Intermittent, localized antipiracy and anti counterfeiting campaigns are an inadequate substitute for a planned, systemic, and consistent approach to domestic and border enforcement activity and the application by the Brazilian legal system of deterrent penalties.
In the patent area, Brazil has made very minor progress under an April 1998 agreement with the U.S. to process the backlog of 15,000 pending patent applications for which it has already collected several million dollars in processing fees. In 2000, the U.S. initiated dispute settlement proceedings against Brazil on a "local working" requirement in the patent law. In June 2001, the United States and Brazil agreed to transfer their dispute to a Bilateral Consultative Mechanism created to address this and other concerns.
COLOMBIA
U.S. pharmaceutical firms are experiencing significant losses in the Colombian market due to inadequate protection of confidential test data and the unavailability of "second use" patents. Colombia is second only to Argentina among Latin American countries in the prevalence of pirated pharmaceuticals. The U.S. Government is disappointed in actions taken by Colombia, on its own and through the Andean Community, to weaken data protection and prohibit "second use" patents throughout the Andean Community.
There is also a need for stronger enforcement of copyright and trademark laws. Although pirated and counterfeit goods are occasionally seized by enforcement authorities, prosecutions rarely follow. Despite repeated requests by the U.S. Government, Colombia has been slow to shut down illegal cable television networks so that licensed ones can take their place. The U.S. Government urges Colombia to take action immediately to remedy the current IPR situation, particularly with regard to patent protection, both in its national legislation and within the Andean Community institutions.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Over the past year, the Dominican Republic has taken some steps to strengthen its IPR regime. However, there are still significant areas of concern that need to be addressed. The industrial patent law appears to suffer from several significant shortcomings with respect to international standards, including in the area of data protection. The U.S. Government also is concerned that the implementing regulations could worsen some of the existing problems with the industrial property law.
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