The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) published its 2019 Special 301 Report, which examines the state of intellectual property rights (IPR) across the United States’ trading partners, highlighting that the protection of U.S. IPR helps cater for the country’s export activities, overseas operations, and overall economic interests. The USTR maintained China on its Priority Watch List for the year 2019 on the back of the widespread physical and online piracy and counterfeiting practices, trade secret theft, and numerous other IPR violations, in addition to the lack of appropriate criminal enforcement to address breaches in that area. India was also kept on the USTR’s Priority Watch List for yet another year in the absence of satisfactory substantial reforms in its IPR framework. Concurrently, Indonesia remained on the USTR’s Priority Watch List as the country lacks suitable and efficient IP protection and application procedures. Furthermore, and on a regional level, the USTR listed Algeria, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia among countries on its Priority Watch List, while including Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates in its Watch List.

On the local front, and as already mentioned, the USTR maintained Lebanon on its Watch List for the year 2019, yet praised the unremitting efforts made by the country to endorse IP protection and enforcement during the past year, along with its renewed intention to ratify legislations related to IP. The U.S. also welcomed the initiative taken by the Lebanese Ministry of Economy and Trade, in collaboration with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), to develop a national IP strategy, yet stressed that further work needs to be done on this level in order for Lebanon to be removed from the Watch List. In specific, the country has to register considerable improvement when it comes to pending IP legislative reforms such as draft laws pertaining to trademarks and adjustments of prevailing copyright and patent laws. Moreover, the country is encouraged to join and implement the most recent acts of different IP framework treaties, particularly, Articles 1-12 of the Paris Convention, the Nice Agreement, the Berne Convention, the Singapore Treaty on the Law of Trademarks, the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), the Madrid Protocol, and the WIPO Copyright Treaty and Performances & Phonograms Treaty. The report added that despite the slowly progressing enforcement efforts, further training should be provided to enforcement officials in order to develop their investigative abilities and additional resources should be allocated for the sake of IP protection and enforcement. Finally, the report reconfirmed the United States’ willingness to continue helping Lebanon resolve all issues related to intellectual property rights protection.