Cables mentioning “Special 301” – Details of US trade pressure on IPR

Below are links to two web page pages that have links to 973 U.S. Department of State cables identified on September 5, 2011, using the http://cablegatesearch.net/ tool for searching 251,287 Wikileaks cables, and the search term, “special 301.”

The two web pages with the cables are here:

• Countries A to F
• Countries G to Y

The search term refers to the annual USTR’s Special 301 Report, which has been issued every year beginning in 1989. The report is described by USTR as follows:

The “Special 301” Report is an annual review of the global state of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and enforcement, conducted by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) pursuant to Section 182 of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended by the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 and the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (enacted in 1994). This Report reflects the Administration’s resolve to encourage and maintain effective IPR protection and enforcement worldwide.

KEI’s web page on the Special 301 Report is /ustr/special301. The 973 cables works out to approximately 10 cables per week for the eight years between Feb 28, 2002 to Feb 26, 2010. Judging from the number of cables for some countries, or the absence of cables from others, this appears to be an incomplete set of the relevant cables.

The cables are organized by the country from which the cable was sent, and then sorted by date. The following table shows the number of cables by country: