William Patry: Israel Fights Back: A Purim Story

William Patry: Israel Fights Back: A Purim Story

It is fitting that on today, the Jewish holiday of Purim I discuss the recent, heroic response of the Government of Israel to the bullying by the U.S. International Intellectual Property Alliance in its submission to the United States Trade Representative regarding the U.S. Special 301 Watch List. (see article in ars technica along with a link to the submission here).

More than one scholar and more than one government has wondered whether Special 301 and its watch lists violate the TRIPs Agreement. Perhaps in the future the issue will be tested before a WTO panel and the issue will finally be decided. (See here for a 1999 panel decision on Sections 305 and 306). But that issue aside, the sheer arrogance and affront to the sovereignty of foreign governments by the IIPA’s annual reports and effort to penalize those governments that do not toe the IIPA’s line is breathtaking. (See earlier post here). One needs to actually pore through the IIPA country reports to fully grasp what I mean: the nitpicking attacks on (translated versions) of foreign statutes which are held up to the light of U.S. law to decipher the slightest deviation – if only semantic – supports the view of the rest of the world that the IIPA is not only insensitive to the rest of the world, but has as its goal the remaking of the world in the U.S. image. This actually not quite right – it is a remaking of the world that contains only those parts of U.S. law that the corporate content owners who are members of the IIPA favor. For example, a little over a year ago I noted the amazing spectacle of the IIPA lobbying USTR to penalize Israel for adopting the U.S. fair use provision. (see here). It is one thing to try and get other countries to see things your way — that’s ordinary self-interest practiced by nations and individuals alike — , and quite another to threaten those who don’t do what you want with trade retaliation on the pretext that those countries are havens for piracy.