o the Berne Convention of Copyrights, and protection of works must last at least fifty years. The United States Congress has provided many of the tools needed to encourage compliance.
Two general rules are presented in the TRIPS Agreement: each member-party will treat nationals of other parties no less favorably than it treats its own, and each party will grant nationals of all countries the same privileges and immunities that it grants to any one party ("most-favored nations" treatment). Article 3 of TRIPS provides for national treatment as follows: "Each Member shall accord to the nationals of other Members treatment no less favorably than that it accords to its own nationals with regard to the protection of intellectual property, subject to the exceptions already provided, respectively, by the Paris Convention."
When it adopted the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), Congress provided a number of tools to the Administration that will be helpful in leveraging prompt and full TRIPS compliance. It set forth a new set of negotiating objectives which required the Administration (1) to work to accelerate TRIPS compliance by developing countries, and (2) to seek protection in foreign countries that supplements and strengthens TRIPS standards,
particularly in light of the rapid growth of technology and, in the case of the copyright industries, the challenges posed by advanced digital networks
Congress strengthened and urged continuing emphasis on Special 301 which has done more than any other provision of U.S. trade law to improve the level of worldwide protection for American products embodying protected copyrights. The URAA made clear that "adequate and effective" protection--the standard now pertaining in Special 301 that countries must meet--is not met merely by a country adhering to the TRIPS agreement. It also gave the President authority to retaliate in areas beyond those just related to trade. This would include...