Guest blog by Richard Cotton, Executive Vice President and General Counsel for NBC Universal and Chairman of the Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy (CACP).

I am visiting Capitol Hill today to testify in support of the most
comprehensive legislation ever introduced on the subject of equipping our
government to protect intellectual property. The Prioritizing Resources and
Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2007 — the PRO IP Act for short
– is a crucial piece of legislation and deserves strong bipartisan support and
quick passage.

As regular visitors to this site know, the
increase in global counterfeiting and piracy constitutes an enormous threat to
our future economic vitality. The U.S. bears the brunt of this activity, but IP
theft knows no boundaries and exacts a heavy toll on both developed and
developing nations.

Here are three reasons everyone should
be alarmed about this epidemic:

First, IP theft is a jobs
and economic security issue, with hundreds of billions of dollars a year and
millions of high-paying jobs at stake.

Second, IP theft is a
health and safety issue that presents a clear and increasing danger to the
public, from counterfeit toothpaste laced with antifreeze to exploding batteries
and other dangerous consumer goods.

Third, IP theft is the
new face of organized crime. Organized crime goes where the money is, and today
that is high-value IP-dependent commerce such as bootleg DVDs and counterfeit
medicine.

Turning the tide will not be easy, and will
require stepped-up efforts on many fronts: in the private sector, in technology
development, and in government action.

In this third area,
I'm pleased to say that the PRO IP Act is a big step in the right direction. It
has the three elements of any government plan that can realistically make a
difference:

* The Act creates key
leadership positions to address the challenge of counterfeiting and piracy
government-wide with the new United States Intellectual Property Enforcement
Representative and within the Department of Justice, by creating a new
Intellectual Property Enforcement Division, headed by an Intellectual Property
Enforcement Officer.
* The Act authorizes more
IP-devoted resources, including expanded numbers of U.S. prosecutors
specializing in IP enforcement, FBI agents dedicated to IP investigations to
support these prosecutors, money for state IP enforcement programs, and
international IP specialists based in U.S. embassies around the
world.
* The Act updates several laws that have
failed to keep pace with the burgeoning threat of counterfeiting and piracy,
such as raising statutory damages in counterfeiting cases, which have remained
the same for more than thirty years; outlawing the export of counterfeit or
pirate product from the United States; and raising the penalty for
counterfeiting that results in death or serious bodily
harm.

If Congress enacts this bill, and other related
proposals that are within the jurisdictions of other Committees of Congress, it
will make a long-term difference. We must tackle the problem of IP theft to
safeguard our economic security, to create jobs, to protect our health and
safety, to defend against organized crime, and to make the United States a model
for our trading partners of how to address this issue.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2007 at 8:08 am by admin and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.