As we noted at the time, yesterday was first-of-its-kind comprehensive strategic intellectual property enforcement plan, prepared by a White House team in the Obama Administration led by U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel. It’s a pretty broad report, and lots of people are pouring through it, but we were pleased to be a part [...]

As promised, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office released today the draft text of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which it is negotiating with numerous trading partners, all of which are committed under international treaties and their own legal systems to enforcement of IP rights. You can see the 39-page draft here, an informative statement from [...]

Kudos to Senate Finance Committee leaders for calling on a key governmental agency to produce two detailed reports on Chinese infringement of copyright and other IP rights. Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and Ranking Member Charles Grassley (R-IA) wrote Shara Aranoff, Chairman of the U.S. International Trade Commission, on Monday, calling for the reports. The first, [...]

The Copyright Alliance submitted comments today (Wednesday, March 24, 2010) to the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (USIPEC), Victoria Espinel, 1) strongly supporting the Obama Administration’s effort to increase enforcement of copyright owners’ rights, 2) emphasizing the importance of education in helping individuals understand the importance of copyright to the economy and the culture and [...]

I’m sounding like a broken record (kids, ask your parents, an audiophile or a club DJ what a record is), but one can’t ignore the focus President Obama and his Administration is placing on the importance of enforcing intellectual property law, in particular ensuring trading partners adhere to their commitments on IP enforcement in their [...]

While President Obama made many interesting points during his State of the Union address last night, I’d like to focus on his discussion of international trade. Obama made several key points: 1) Small business can be a growing part of trade, including entrepreneurs. 2) Americans can produce exports unrivaled by the rest of the world. [...]

Three cheers to the Obama Administration for hosting Tuesday at the White House a key jobs summit, one involving the jobs of creators and their collaborators in creation. The Associated Press quoted the host of the event, Vice president Joseph Biden, as saying of copyright piracy: “This is flat unadulterated theft, and it should be [...]

In rhetoric, there’s an old trick — begin with a true statement, and then follow with an argument that does not naturally follow from the true statement. When challenged, ignore the criticism of the argument and instead defend the true statement. Here’s an example. True statement — “We’ll always have copyright infringement. You can never [...]

On Sunday night the venerable CBS news show “60 Minutes” did a segment on motion picture piracy. To those of us working actively in this space, it was pretty accurate but not new. It generalized a fair amount, but those of us with a journalism background understand this was a short segment targeting a general [...]

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 [...]