the passage of the copyright law, there has been virtually no action by Lebanon against piracy. In addition, pervasive cable piracy continues to devastate legitimate theatrical, video, and television service providers. End-user piracy of computer software is pervasive among large companies, banks, trading companies, and most government ministries. Also troubling is an overly broad software exception for certain educational uses in the new copyright law that seriously undermines the viability of this market for legitimate products. The U.S. Government is also concerned by the establishment of an optical media production facility in Lebanon, which has become an exporter of pirated product. The United States urges Lebanon to address its severe copyright protection problems.
PHILIPPINES
Significant problems remain in ensuring adequate and effective protection of intellectual property rights in the Philippines. Legislation to fully implement its TRIPS Agreement commitments has been slow to develop, and enforcement efforts have had little deterrent effect on the extraordinary level of copyright piracy. The United States, however, is encouraged by President Macapagal-Arroyo's strong commitment to tackling intellectual property rights issues, and the United States welcomes the Supreme Court's recent ruling affirmatively establishing the ability of the court to grant ex parte search warrants. The United States hopes this ruling initiates a trend to improve the quality of the Philippines IPR-related laws and regulations. However, there remain many obstacles to the effective enforcement of intellectual property rights in the Philippines, including the low number of raids, insufficiently trained prosecutors, and procedural and judicial delays. Meanwhile, optical disk piracy and trademark counterfeiting continues to increase dramatically. The U.S. Government urges the Philippines to redouble its enforcement efforts across the board and to enact strong IPR laws and regulations, including a strong law to regulate the production of optical disks. The U.S. Government will conduct an OCR later in the year in order to monitor the situation in the Philippines.
RUSSIA
As part of its efforts to join the WTO, Russia will need to bring its intellectual property rights regime into full compliance with the TRIPS Agreement by the date of accession. Certain provisions of the Russian Copyright Law and Russia's enforcement regime appear to be inconsistent with the TRIPS Agreement and the intellectual property rights provisions of the 1992 U.S.-Russian Federation Trade Agreement. Lack of an effective OD law, enforcement against unauthorized production and export of CDs and CD-ROMs and concerns about protection for well-known marks are growing problems, and result in substantial losses to U.S. industry each year. The United States urges Russia to pass the IPR legislation pending before the Duma (except for Part IV of the Civil Code), to establish an effective optical media regime, and to increase enforcement efforts across the board for both copyrights and trademarks.
TAIWAN
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