The U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk on Friday announced this year’s “Special 301″ list of countries failing to adequately protect the rights of IP owners. Kudos to The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, for making it off the Watch List due to improvements in their borders. USTR noted these successes follow similar improvements in Israel [...]

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 [...]

We filed comments with the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator yesterday, as did hundreds of individual artists and creators, but there were many other submissions the USIPEC, Victoria Espinel, and her team should find of value. A common theme among just about every one I’ll be summarizing here — the importance of education on the [...]

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 [...]

Once again President Obama has demonstrated a commitment to copyright owners’ rights, just as more than 11,000 artists and creators asked him to do last fall in a Copyright Alliance letter to him and Vice President Biden. As I have in past posts, here are his own words, in a speech yesterday at the Export-Import [...]

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 [...]

It is in the best interest of any broadband user who adheres to the law to see that other customers filling up the broadband pipe with infringing traffic are stymied; that leaves more pipe for the legal user. Have you ever streamed a movie or TV show through Netflix? Before the presentation begins, there’s a [...]

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 [...]

Start with a web site that posts high-quality, professional-level visual arts works, with the intention of making them available easily and for free to all. Then imagine that it actively encourages people to upload works that are not theirs, but just “found” online. Then imagine it pokes creators in the eye by calling the monthly [...]

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. [...]