"Mar 16-17: A delegation led by Chris Israel, U.S. Coordinator for Intellectual Property Enforcement, visited Brussels to participate in the second meeting of the newly established U.S.-EU Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Working Group. The delegation also included officials from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the U.S. Trade Representative, and the State Department, Commerce Department and Department of Homeland Security. During the meeting, U.S. and EU officials met with European stakeholders to discuss how business and government could work together to address their IPR enforcement priorities. The U.S. and the EU also discussed specifics of an action plan on transatlantic coordination. The first meeting of the U.S.-EU IPR Working Group, established by the U.S.-EUs Economic Ministerial in November 2005, took place in Washington, D.C. on January 26-27." http://useu.usmission.gov/About_The_Mission/2006_US_Mission_Activities.asp
Susan Schwab http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/ip-health/2006-March/009191.html
The EU, United States and India also joined hands to fight a coalition of developing countries, including South Africa, Venezuela, Kenya and the Philippines, that want to limit the multinationals' access to their services markets. South Africa proposed that each country would negotiate with each of the other members of the WTO. But the Deputy US Trade Representative, Susan Schwab, retorted that talks about services markets were becoming abstruse even by WTO standards. An acrimonious debate arose over the extent to which countries should be required to let foreign competitors into their markets for services like banking, telecommunications, hospital management and computer programming. http://www.weeklyholiday.net/2005/231205/front.html
http://www.thedailystar.net/2005/11/13/d51113050954.htm "We want to know what their government budget is for software purchases," Deputy US Trade Representative Susan Schwab said following a discussion on US anti-piracy and anti-counterfeiting efforts around the world.
http://hongkong.usconsulate.gov/current/wtohk/121603.htm AMBASSADOR SCHWAB: Thank you. Is this the end of the Doha round as we know it? No, not yet. Too early to make that prediction, and we're still hopeful. We've got a year to go. We had greater ambitions for Hong Kong than have been realized, but that doesn't mean that we aren't in a position to move the ball forward.
On your question as to bilateral negotiations, the economist in me feels very strongly that multilateral agreements, particularly trade-liberalizing agreements, are much more beneficial. That said, free trade agreements -- bilateral or groups of countries -- can be used very, very effectively to meet ambitions, to create precedents in areas like services or intellectual property, to go further than lowest-common-denominator solutions.
