equipment used to make them, are seized and destroyed. These products can be produced and sold at prices much lower than legitimate products, but still deliver attractive profit margins for the infringer because the counterfeit and pirated products are usually made with substandard materials, and undergo little or no quality control or even basic health and safety testing. The economic damage caused by counterfeiting to the legitimate companies whose products are counterfeited is enormous. Losses to U.S. industries alone are estimated at $200 to $250 billion per year.
Controlling Optical Media Production
To address existing and prevent future piratical activity, over the past year some of our trading partners, such as Malaysia and Taiwan, have taken important steps toward implementing, or have committed to adopt, much needed controls on optical media production. We await news of aggressive enforcement of these laws. However, others that are in urgent need of such controls, including Ukraine, Thailand, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Russia, have not made sufficient progress in this regard.
Governments such as those of China, Hong Kong, and Macau that implemented optical media controls in previous years have clearly demonstrated their commitment to continue to enforce these measures. The effectiveness of such measures is underscored by the direct experience of these governments in successfully reducing pirate production of optical media. We continue to urge our trading partners facing the threat of pirate optical media production within their borders to adopt similar controls or aggressively enforce existing regulations in the coming year. USTR is concerned, moreover, about recent reports of increased piracy and counterfeiting in Bulgaria, which had been a model in its region for taking the necessary steps to tackle optical media piracy by, for example, enacting optical media controls. Particularly troubling are reports that the CD plant licensing laws may be revised in a manner that would undermine, not improve, their effectiveness. We will be closely monitoring the situation and look to the Government of Bulgaria to maintain strong optical disk regulations.
Implementation of the WTO TRIPS Agreement
One of the most significant achievements of the Uruguay Round was the negotiation of the TRIPS Agreement, which requires all WTO Members to provide certain minimum standards of protection for patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, geographical indications and other forms of intellectual property. The Agreement also requires countries to provide effective enforcement of these rights. The TRIPS Agreement is the first broadly-subscribed multilateral intellectual property agreement that is enforceable between governments, allowing them to resolve disputes through the WTO's dispute settlement mechanism.
Developed countries were required to fully implement TRIPS as of January 1, 1996, while developing countries were given a transition period – until January 1, 2000. Ensuring that
