PROTECTING U.S. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AND THE CHALLENGES OF DIGITAL PIRACY OFFICE OF INDUSTRIES WORKING PAPER U.S. International Trade Commission (original) (raw)

Legal Responses to IPR Infringement in Internet Sphere

The emergence of the Internet has changed the ways in which we create, distribute, access, and use information. The Internet provides manifold opportunities for users, operators, businesses, and the public at large for speedy, cheap, and global dissemination of information, knowledge, research, and entertainment. At the same time, it also poses complex conceptual and empirical challenges for intellectual property and related rights. Works of intellectual property can be digitized and transferred over the Internet. Many trademarks have been placed on it by the companies for advertising and marketing goods and services. In the field of copyright, a number of works of literature, film and art, and notably computer programs, have been transferred over the Internet. The patent system has also migrated onto the Internet. It is now popular for companies to patent their online business methods. In the Internet Sphere, the infringer can easily misdirect consumers to its website by using another's trademark as a meta-tag, and it is also easy to copy and distribute other's copyright materials unlawfully. Due to global nature of the Internet, an Internet IP infringement usually happens not only within one country but also across borders. All of these have raised many difficulties for the protection of IPRs in Internet sphere. Therefore everyone has been dubious of what the actual laws concerning Intellectual Property rights are in relation to Internet sphere. Today the Internet explosion has made the question of how to enforce IP law on a global scale as an imperative issue. In this Article, the author tries to accentuate the existing as well as changing IPR challenges brought about by the Internet and project what issues a national legislature should consider to meet the demands of the digital revolution. The core object of this study is to scrutinize the compelling factors behind the Intellectual Property Rights Infringements through the Internet and investigate the existing Legal Responses in International, Regional and Local levels. However, the findings demonstrate that mass-awareness, consensus and mutual cooperation among the developed and developing countries, proper enforcement of the existing laws as well as bringing amendments to some areas of Law can be cited as a potential solution.

Global dynamic timelines for IPRs harmonization against software piracy

This paper employs a recent methodological innovation on intellectual property rights (IPRs) harmonization to project global timelines for common policies against software piracy. The findings on 99 countries are premised on 15 fundamental characteristics of software piracy based on income-levels (high-income, lower-middle-income, upper-middle-income and low-income), legal-origins (English common-law, French civil-law, German civil-law and, Scandinavian civil-law) and, regional proximity (South Asia, Europe & Central Asia, East Asia & the Pacific, Middle East & North Africa, Latin America & the Caribbean and, Sub-Saharan Africa). The results broadly show that a feasible horizon for the harmonization of blanket policies ranges from 4 to 10 years.

The IPR GPR: The Emergence of a Global Prohibition Regime to Regulate Intellectual Property Infringement

Piracy: Leakages from Modernity, 2014

Intellectual property rights (IPR) are a central aspect of the global communication infrastructure. Increasingly, what Nadelmann describes as a global prohibition regime (GPR) is emerging to protect the IPR of multinational corporations. The GPR model is significant to communication policy studies because it allows researchers to frame the political, moral, judicial and police responses to IPR infringement and compare those responses to current and historical examples outside of traditional communication paradigms. The model also gauges the likelihood for success or failure of a GPR. I apply the model to current IPR regulation in conjunction with literature criticizing the political economy of communication and the nature of information policy in the global economy. After establishing the literature and giving an overview of historical models of GPRs including high seas piracy and drug trafficking, I provide a model for the IPR GPR. I analyze the model through a case study involving pressures on Spain by the U.S. and coalitions of multinational corporations in the intellectual property industries, and conclude that the IPR GPR, in practice, runs the risk of creating perceptions of democratic deficits among citizens and failing to legitimize norms against intellectual property infringement on the Internet. Keywords: Global prohibition regimes, intellectual property rights, piracy, information policy, political economy

Protecting the digital endeavour: prospects for intellectual property rights in the information society

2001

The impacts of the New Economy are not limited only to recently developed technologies, but involve new opportunities for more "traditional" technologies to develop. Knowledge-based industries, and information technologies in particular, hold both promises and threats in many fields. However, as technical know-how is both an input to and an output of knowledge-based industries, IPR regimes may have a large effect on the pace of innovation in knowledge-based technologies. Knowledge is a stimulus for innovation, particularly in knowledge-based technologies where large shares of technical know-how are embedded in final goods. Information goods are described as public goods: if information is disclosed to the public, its originator loses the advantages of propriety, but a new generation of know-how and ideas is stimulated and expanded as a result of its publication. However, knowledge is not legally a public good because unauthorized reproduction can be monitored by IPR. Whether IPR regimes facilitate innovation or reduce its pace has been raised as a pressing issue by the emergence of new technological paradigms and recent economic changes, namely the New Economy. This paper discusses four technologies which are emblematic of the new economy, and which raise important issues regarding IPRs. The technologies presented in this report were selected for analysis on three criteria. First, they are predicted to see rapid evolution during the coming decade and to hold a major share of both economic activity and growth. Second, these technologies are knowledge-based and most have been developed since the mid 1980s. Third, in the context of the technologies discussed here, the current design of IPR regimes seems to conflict with their original aims, namely fostering innovation and technological diffusion by promoting knowledge disclosure and granting monopoly. This report also reviews alternative economic and business models that question the need to protect information goods by IPRs. This paper is drawn from a report commissioned by AWT (Adviesraad voor het Wetenschaps-en Technologiebeleid) published as an AWT Background Study No. 22 (June, 2001).

Study on Legislative Measures Related to Online IPR Infringements : A Project Commissioned by the European Union Intellectual Property Office

2018

Intellectual property right (IPR) infringement has taken and increasingly takes place in the online environment, in particular on the internet, which has raised concerns on many different levels, and has led to a number of recent European initiatives. A number of legislative measures have been adopted at both international and European levels whose purposes are to strengthen and harmonise the protection of IPR. These measures include remedies, which aim to enable rights holders and law enforcement authorities, such as prosecutors, to enforce IPR in an effective manner. However, the provisions in the abovementioned legislation are, for the most part, not drafted in ways that specifically address how to prevent or combat online IPR infringement, but are -merely in the form of minimum requirements, which leave room for individual Member States to adopt and apply specific national measures.The main purpose of this study commissioned by the EUIPO is, therefore, to establish whether and t...

The Interaction between Private and Public IPR Protection in a Software Market: A Positive and Normative Analysis

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013

Two software developers, each o¤ering a product variety of di¤erent (exogenously given) quality, compete in prices for heterogeneous users who choose from purchasing a legal version, using an illegal copy, and not using a product at all. Using an illegal version violates intellectual property rights (IPR) and is thus punishable when disclosed. If a developer considers the level of piracy as high, he can introduce protection for his product in the form of restricting support and other services to illegal users. We study the positive and normative implications of the interaction between a regulator's IPR protection and the IPR protection that producers themselves may undertake to protect their IPR against the end users'software piracy. In particular, we aim to establish when the two forms of IPR protections (public and private) act as complements and when as substitutes to each other. Finally, we explore the situations in which there is (or is not) a con ‡ict of interest between the regulator and the developers in this respect.