There is no larger global market than China. If you are one in a million in that country there are more than 1,300 of you. Naturally, as the U.S. looks to promote jobs here in this country, we want to export our creativity abroad. It does little good if our creative works are phenomenally popular [...]

Joining a bevy of other Obama Administration officials including the President himself — U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder spoke out forcefully in defense of strong IP and in particular copyright enforcement this week.
The AG spoke yesterday in Rio De Janeiro at the Prosecutor General’s office on IP enforcement (thank you Tech Law Journal for [...]

The Property Rights Alliance (PRA) has outdone itself with the 2010 International Property Rights Index (IPRI) Report, which once again highlights the close coordination of strong rule of law and physical and intellectual property rights in a nation’s economic success. The latest data shows those countries in the top quintile on those yardsticks have an [...]

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. [...]

U.S. Trade Ambassador Ron Kirk today gave perhaps the most eloquent statement I’ve heard in some time on why enforcing international trade treaties is not protectionism, but common sense. When the U.S. government seeks enforcement of treaty obligations, he said, “we’re fighting for the rights of our American businesses.” Ambassador Kirk has spoken before about [...]

There remains a stubbornness out there among some Internet users, a sense of entitlement to enjoying someone else’s creativity without payment to the creator.
In this Chicago Sun-Times story by Kara Spak, Ms. Spak quotes a student at the U. of Illinois at Chicago who enjoys watching unauthorized and infringing copies of movies online saying the [...]

I had the pleasure of attending yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for President Obama’s choice to be the nation’s first Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC), the very capable Victoria Espinel. The Copyright Alliance earlier this week sent a letter to Committee members and Senate leadership urging swift confirmation of Espinel (see here a copy [...]

Like all creative industries, the photography industry is undergoing significant change. Technologies have been of benefit to professional photographers by easing legal distribution and creating new models for licensing, and have helped them to better express themselves in their art. But technologies have also enabled infringement of their works, and have created avenues for less [...]

This is a busy week in Washington on the health care front, but IP issues keep popping up as well, like yesterday’s hearing on the dangers of P2P to another hearing yesterday, the confirmation hearing for David Kappos, the IBM veteran up for U.S. Patent and Trademark Office director. He noted in his testimony that [...]