APR 29, 2020 | GLOBAL
BSA Urges Increased Focus on Innovation-Related Market Access Barriers in Annual Special 301 Process
WASHINGTON – April 29, 2020 – BSA | The Software Alliance welcomes today’s release of the 2020 Special 301 report by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), as well as USTR’s attention to the worldwide challenge presented by the use of unlicensed software, which has a market value of nearly $50 billion.
The Special 301 statute requires USTR to identify countries that deny adequate and effective intellectual property (IP) protection as well as countries that deny fair and equitable market access to US persons who rely on IP protection. BSA urges USTR, in the Special 301 process, to address these market access barriers, which represent an increasingly urgent threat to the US software industry and its ability to continue leading global advances in innovative technology.
As detailed in BSA’s 2020 Special 301 submission, US trading partners deny US IP holders fair and equitable market access through a wide array of innovation-related trade barriers that should be addressed in the annual Special 301 process. This includes unnecessarily restrictive measures to prevent US IP holders from transferring data across borders — whether through data localization measures or by imposing unreasonable conditions in order to send it abroad. There is an urgent need for increased attention to these innovation-related cross-border data restrictions, which disproportionately impact US IP-intensive industries, including the US software industry.
ABOUT BSA
BSA | The Software Alliance (www.bsa.org) is the leading advocate for the global software industry before governments and in the international marketplace. Its members are among the world’s most innovative companies, creating software solutions that help businesses of all sizes in every part of the economy to modernize and grow.
With headquarters in Washington, DC, and operations in more than 30 countries, BSA pioneers compliance programs that promote legal software use and advocates for public policies that foster technology innovation and drive growth in the digital economy.