President Donald Trump’s first action on intellectual property is buried within his newly released Presidential Executive Order on Enforcing Federal Law with Respect to Transnational Criminal Organizations and Preventing International Trafficking. The executive basically orders the already existing inter-agency Threat Mitigation Working Group to delve further into its already-existent mission of fighting transnational organized crime. The primary action item is a report due in June 2017 that discusses the extent of penetration of those organziations into the US and mechanisms for combating their crimes.
The IP part is small:
Policy. It shall be the policy of the executive branch to (a) strengthen enforcement of Federal law in order to thwart transnational criminal organizations and subsidiary organizations, including criminal gangs, cartels, racketeering organizations, and other groups engaged in illicit activities that present a threat to public safety and national security and that are related to, for example . . . intellectual-property theft.
Theft here suggests a crime – and so we are probably talking primarily about criminal copyright infringement and identity theft.
Are new laws allowing for criminal enforcement against patent infringers inevitable if and when 3d scanning and 3d printing allow for quick and exact copying of patented articles?
I see the parallel that you may be driving at, but would point out that the criminal aspects in copyright were there long before the fact of digital copying provided the analog to your 3D capabilities in the patent world.
In other words, the advent of such capabilities are not (necessarily) tied to any driver for the role of criminal laws.
There is in fact a counter movement based on the ease of digital copying that seeks to eliminate (or drastically change) copyright protection as it is known today – which is part of why I responded to DanH as I did below.
In a violent future with scarce resources rival gangs fight over the only currency left: IP. Only one man can turn the tide and save civilization from oblivion, but cane do it before the IP runs out?
Aside from any political sniping (in other words, no matter who is in the President’s Office), one has to wonder why one IP item stemming from the Constitutional IP clause even has “transgression as a criminal offense” while the other does not.
Maybe a genuine legal discussion on this point might interurpt the usual rants…
You’re right. We should get rid of criminal liability for copyright infringement.
I would be more than fine with that.
In the meantime, one wonders why the criminal aspect is in one side and not the other (which of course, would be interesting – 😉 )
Maybe a genuine legal discussion on this point
Let us know when you say something interesting.
You wouldn’t know interesting if it sm@cked you aside the head.
I’m sure China is really just shaking in its boots over Tangerine Torquemada’s pre-impeachment rants.
From reading the order, it looks like they’re probably talking more about corporate espionage than copyright infringement or identity theft. Helloooooo China!
IP does appear to have been added on there at the end of a long list.
Everything this administration does seems like a hastily cobbled together “add on”.
There has never been this much rank incompetence in the White House and, hopefully, there never will be again. The most important question is how much damage can they do before they get thrown out. At the moment, the media is still carrying water for these cl ue less h@ ters, waiting for some “pivot” towards competence and sanity that is never going to happen.
Imagine how Republicans and our “liberal media” would have responded if Obama had pumped Michelle’s new line of clothing on national TV. Oy. What a nightmare.
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