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Special 301 Report Priority Foreign Country
05/03/2004
PRIORITY FOREIGN COUNTRY
UKRAINE
The United States withdrew Ukraine's benefits under the Generalized System of
Preferences (GSP) program in August 2001 and imposed $75 million worth of
sanctions on Ukrainian imports on January 23, 2002. These sanctions remain in
effect based on the repeated failure of the Government of Ukraine to enact and
enforce adequate optical disc media licensing legislation in order to fully
comply with the June 2000 U.S.-Ukraine Joint Action Plan to Combat Optical Media
Piracy. The Ukrainian Government has drafted amendments to the existing Optical
Disc Licensing Law to address the law's inadequacies, but Ukraine's Rada has
failed to pass these amendments on several occasions. As a result, Ukraine's law
does not have adequate enforcement provisions to prevent unauthorized optical
media production and distribution. Ukraine is also a major trans-shipment point
and storage location for illegal optical media produced in Russia and elsewhere.
While Ukraine has taken some steps to address its optical media piracy problem,
border enforcement efforts remain weak and small criminal penalties for
unauthorized production and export of CDs and CD?ROMs do not act as an effective
deterrent. As a result, there continue to be extremely high levels of piracy and
substantial losses to U.S. industry. Trademark counterfeiting is also a serious
problem and U.S. firms remain concerned over the lack of cooperation by
enforcement officials in combating counterfeiting activities. The United States
urges the Ukrainian Government to pass amendments to its optical media law to
provide for adequate enforcement. Ukrainian officials also must strengthen
current enforcement efforts to deter optical media piracy and address trademark
counterfeiting.