WASHINGTON — First President Obama appoints a perfect individual to protect the rights of intellectual property owners around the world. Victoria Espinel, upon Senate confirmation, will be the nation’s first IP Enforcement Coordinator, a new statutory position resulting from the PRO-IP Act.

Today, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk spoke at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Global IP Center Summit and reiterated the Obama administration’s commitment to the rights of intellectual property owners.

At the risk of appearing as if I have a man-crush on Ambassador Kirk — see my previous praise here, here and here for starters — Kirk once again showed he understands why rights are important to producers of intellectual property. Some highlights:

* He said the “rewards of creativity” should go to creators, which drives innovation and maintains global leadership. A full 95% of consumers live outside the U.S., and U.S. creators need to see revenues from the consumption by those consumers.

* Of those exports of intellectual property works, a full 90% of U.S. exporters are small or medium-sized businesses, “the vast majority of which have 200 or fewer employees.”

* Asked of the culture of infringement, Kirk said: “Some of it is on the parents.” “Piracy sounds kind of romantic,” he said, recalling going to see Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean with his family, but he tells his teenage daughters that when it comes to online infringement, “This is theft, and you need to talk to your kids like that… There’s nothing cute, nothing fun about theft.”

* Further emphasizing education of creators’ rights, he said: “If there isn’t a way to educate, these creative works won’t be made.”

Later this fall, we will be transmitting to President Obama and Vice President Obama Biden, and other leaders in his Administration, a letter from artists and creators echoing Ambassador Kirk’s remarks, namely that creators’ rights must be respected in the digital age. We launched the letter — found here (http://www.copyrightalliance.org/letter/ ) with just under 7,000 artists having signed, now we are at about 8,000 after one day. Read more about the letter in Lucinda’s blog post.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 at 1:44 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under counterfeit, creators, education, events, Obama, piracy, property rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.