Thursday, May 02, 2013

China trade secret theft a "grave problem": U.S. trade agency

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is gravely concerned about the impact that Chinese theft of U.S. trade secrets is having on American companies and the economic security of the United States, the U.S. Trade Representative's office said on Wednesday.


"It's a grave problem with dimensions that go beyond even trade and intellectual property issues," a USTR official said in an advance briefing of the agency's annual report on countries with the worst records of protecting U.S. patents, copyrights and other intellectual property rights.

"You'll find a lot of discussion of trade secret misappropriation concerns in the China section of the report," the official said on condition of anonymity.

"That includes both conventional employee-related trade secret thefts and also cyber-theft, which has clearly emerged as big issue recently," the official said.

The U.S. Trade Representative's office stopped short of designating China as a "priority foreign country" because of trade secret theft, as recently urged by two senior Democrats in the House of Representatives.

That would have initiated a process that could lead to sanctions on Chinese goods if U.S. concerns were not addressed.

"We remain resolved to use all the appropriate trade policy tools now and in the future to contribute to the administration-wide response to that problem," the official said.

yahoo.com

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