2019 Special 301 Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets: Comment Request

The "Special 301" Report is an annual review of the global state of intellectual property rights ("IPR") protection and enforcement, which the Office of the United States Trade Representative ("USTR") conducts 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).

On August 19, 2019, the Office of the United States Trade Representative published in the Federal Register (84 FR 42975) 2019 Special 301 Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets: Comment Request

USTR invites written comments concerning examples of online and physical markets based outside the United States that reportedly engage in and facilitate substantial copyright piracy or trademark counterfeiting. To facilitate the review, written comments should be as detailed as possible. Comments must clearly identify the market and the reasons why the commenter believes that the market should be included in the Notorious Markets List. Commenters should include the following information, as applicable:

For physical markets:

• The market's name and location, e.g., common name, street address, neighborhood, shopping district, city, etc., and the identity of the principal owners/operators.

For online markets:

• The domain name(s) past and present, available registration information, and name(s) and location(s) of the hosting provider(s) and operator(s).
• Information on the volume of internet traffic associated with the website, including number of visitors and page views, average time spent on the site, estimate of the number of infringing goods offered, sold, or traded and number of infringing files streamed, shared, seeded, leeched, downloaded, uploaded, or otherwise distributed or reproduced, and global or country popularity rating (e.g., Alexa rank).
• Revenue sources such as sales, subscriptions, donations, upload incentives, or advertising and the methods by which that revenue is collected.

For physical and online markets:

• Whether the market is owned, operated, or otherwise affiliated with a government entity.
• Types of counterfeit or pirated products or services sold, traded, distributed, or otherwise made available at that market.
• Volume of counterfeit or pirated goods or services or other indicia of a market's scale, reach, or relative significance in a given geographic area or with respect to a category of goods or services.
• Estimates of economic harm to right holders resulting from the piracy or counterfeiting and a description of the methodology used to calculate the harm.
• Whether the volume of counterfeit or pirated goods or estimates of harm has increased or decreased from previous years, and an approximate calculation of that increase or decrease for each year.
• Whether the infringing goods or services sold, traded, distributed, or made available pose a risk to public health or safety.
• Any known contractual, civil, administrative, or criminal enforcement activity against the market and the outcome of that enforcement activity.
• Additional actions taken by right holders against the market such as takedown notices, requests to sites to remove URLs or infringing content, cease and desist letters, warning letters to landlords and requests to enforce the terms of their leases, requests to providers to enforce their terms of service or terms of use, and the outcome of these actions.
• Additional actions taken by the market owners or operators to remove, limit, or discourage the availability of counterfeit or pirated goods or services, including policies to prevent or remove access to such goods or services, or to disable seller or user accounts, the effectiveness of market policies and guidelines in addressing counterfeiting and piracy, and the level of cooperation with right holders and law enforcement.
• Any other additional information relevant to the review.

Past Notorious Markets Lists have included an `issue focus' to highlight an issue related to the facilitation of substantial trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy. The issue focus for the 2019 Notorious Markets List will be ``Malware and Online Piracy.'' USTR invites written comments on this issue, such as the relationship between malware and online notorious markets based outside the United States, the size and scope of the issue, estimates of economic harm caused by the malware, specific examples, and recommended solutions.