The US Trade Representative Mickey Kantor was last week bombarded with complaints from the US computer and telecommunications sector about alleged restrictive practices and non-compliance with purchasing agreements on the part of Japan, but the most serious complaint comes from the American Electronics Association, which has asked Kantor to join it in protesting a planned Japanese software registration process that it says could raise software development costs by 20%. In what looks very like a means to protect the Japanese embedded software industry, Japan intends to require that all companies wanting to sell products that include embedded software – from games machines to aircraft – to get their quality systems registered by the Japan Accreditation Board, possibly starting in October. According to the Association, only Japanese firms are currently accredited by the Accreditation Board, and this, in effect, constitutes a non-tariff trade barrier. It also believes there is significant risk that auditors could obtain proprietary information during the auditing process, and that some 30% of US exports to Japan could be affected by the ruling.
