By Tom Miles
GENEVA, Jan 25 (Reuters) - The tiny Caribbean nation of
Antigua and Barbuda will tell the World Trade Organization on
Monday that it intends to use trade sanctions against the United
States, which it could enforce by allowing movie downloads
without protecting U.S. copyright.
Antigua has the right to do so because it won a WTO legal
case, first launched in 2003, against a U.S. ban on online
gambling. The United States then said it would no longer apply
WTO rules to gambling but failed to offer Antigua comparable
access in other services, as it should have.
Antigua won the right to hit back with trade sanctions and -
with little hope of persuading Washington by threatening to
block U.S. imports to the nation of 70,000 - it was given
permission to use intellectual property instead.
"American intellectual property rights holders are fighting
piracy across the globe. They hate the theft of their
intellectual property rights and they spend enormous sums trying
to prevent it," Mark Mendel, a lawyer representing Antigua in
the case, told Reuters.
He declined to say exactly how Antigua might act, but said
it could include copyrights, patents or trademarks.
A website that allowed users to download U.S. software or
movies without paying anything to the copyright holders was one
possibility, as was selling Manchester United T-shirts - the
soccer club is owned by the American Glazer family.
"If, when, how it's going to happen, people will just have
to wait to find out."
Although the WTO awarded Antigua the right to impose only
$21 million in annual sanctions, Mendel said the size of the
award was not an obstacle.
If Antigua were to begin a state-sponsored website to
download Hollywood movies and U.S.-made computer software, it
could still inflict a lot of damage on U.S. rights holders.
"When you think about it, $21 million could be all
accomplished in one go or in 50 million goes. The dollar figure
is not important," he said.
Asked if a site charging one cent per download would be a
way to accomplish Antigua's aims, he said: "That is an
intellectual possibility."
The WTO gave Antigua the right to retaliate with sanctions
in December 2007 and it announced last month that it had finally
given up waiting for a U.S. compromise proposal. The government
hoped the threat of sanctions would break the logjam, Mendel
said.
"We've heard a lot more from them (the U.S. negotiators)
over the past two weeks than over the past 10 years." He added
that Antigua's main aim was still to get the United States to
comply.
In an emailed reply to a request for comment, a spokeswoman
for the U.S. Trade Representative said: "The U.S. is in ongoing
discussions with Antigua in an effort to find a mutually
satisfactory resolution to this dispute."
The United States should be worried about other WTO members
following Antigua and using the same tactic to get their way in
trade disputes, Mendel said.
"If they aren't worried enough about Antigua they should be
worried about someone else coming along. If we do something
inventive that could pose a lot of problems for intellectual
property holders, if we create that precedent, the consequences
could be enormous," he said.
"With Antigua, it's $21 million. Maybe with China it's going
to be $21 billion," said Mendel.
"One of the messages we want to get across is that the WTO
was sold to smaller countries as a level playing field and a way
for them to expand the reach of commerce, subject to a set of
rules that apply to everybody. I think more than anything else
this case is about fairness. The WTO is supposed to be fair."
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