(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The "Special 301 Report" is a list of countries where US companies and products face "trade barriers" in the form of patent laws, copyright laws and the like, which the United States believes is particularly important to influence.
The list is released by the US Trade Authority USTR – a government institution responsible for drafting the country's trade policy that is directly under the US President.
Woolen process. According to patent expert and UN adviser James Love, there are no clear objective criteria for getting on the list. He explains: "The way this works is that some companies apply to USTR, nominate a country for a place on the list because of a given policy, law or case law that they lose money, and say what they want this country to do. do for them. Often, companies have former USTR employees on the payroll to lobby. The whole process is political, arbitrary and opaque. ”
Mysterious coercive agent. US-owned companies can nominate countries where they face trade barriers to list. Countries that have not violated international laws or trade agreements also risk blacklisting. There are no known standardized rules for how the US government can respond to countries on the list. The WikiLeaks documents show that threatening to put a country on the list is used as a way of "forcing" the country to comply, in whole or in part, with the demands of the US government and US-owned companies.
