U.S. launches review of India’s Intellectual Property Regime

The U.S. has launched a review of India’s Intellectual Property Regime, in which the focus is to measure the engagement that New Delhi has pursued in terms of intellectual property.

India on ‘Priority watch list’ The USTR’s ‘Out-of-Cycle’ (OCR) Review follows the 2014 Special 301 Report that came out in April, in which the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) had placed India on the ‘Priority Watch List’

It had noted that it would conduct an OCR of India focusing in particular on assessing progress made in establishing and building effective, meaningful, and constructive engagement with the Government of India on IPR issues of concern.

“Specifically, the out-of-cycle review is focused on engagement, what type of engagement has India pursued in terms of intellectual property,” a USTR official told PTI.

The move comes soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a high profile to the U.S. last month.

The official said that from the U.S. government side, there had been ‘a good deal’ of engagement, including three trips since July to India one of which was specifically focused on intellectual property.

The official added that in the joint statement released following Prime Minister Modi and President Barack Obama’s meeting also had a reference to intellectual property.

“Agreeing on the need to foster innovation in a manner that promotes economic growth and job creation, the leaders committed to establish an annual high-level Intellectual Property (IP) Working Group with appropriate decision-making and technical-level meetings as part of the TPF,” the joint statement had said. The official added that while the USTR is aware that India is pursuing a new IP policy and there is certainly ‘some track record’ for engagement, “we need this engagement to reach to substantive results. And that is what this out-of-cycle review is going to measure.”