US Announces Partial GSP Suspension for Ukraine Due to Poor IPR Protection

On December 22, 2017, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced that it would suspend some of Ukraine’s benefits under the US General System of Preferences (GSP) due to Ukraine’s “failure to provide adequate and effective protection of intellectual property rights despite years of encouragement and assistance from the US government.”

The US has given Ukraine 120 days’ notice to remedy the situation, mainly copyright-related issues such as a nontransparent system governing copyright collectives responsible for collecting and distributing royalties to rights holders.

GSP is a preferential trade program which allows duty-free importing of goods from developing countries into the US. The regime currently applies to 3,500 types of Ukrainian products.

The US has previously criticized Ukraine’s inadequate intellectual property protection laws in the Special 301 Report which identifies countries whose inadequate IPR protection laws present trade barriers to US companies and products.

Prepared by: Yulia Kropivka

For more information, please contact ukraine@petosevic.com.

Source: Office of the United States Trade Representative