White House Seeks New IP Strategy, House Holds Hearing on Patents
On the two-year anniversary of the Administration’s Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement, Federal IP Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel on Monday announced that the administration is developing a new strategy for IP enforcement, and seeking input. In the announcement Espinel indicated that recommendations may include, but need not be limited to: legislation, regulation, guidance, executive order, Presidential memoranda, or other executive action, including, but not limited to, changes to agency policies, practices or methods. She also said that the administration is looking for information on and recommendations for combating emerging or future threats to American innovation and economic competitiveness posed by violations of intellectual property rights.
Also on the IP front, the House Judiciary Sbcmte. on Competition and the Internet will hold a hearing today on Protecting Patents, Trade Secrets and Market Access. Teresa Stanek Rea, the Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and PTO Deputy Director is the key witness.
Enforcement News
Pinterest Gives Copyright Credit to Etsy, Kickstarter, SoundCloud (Mashable)
Amidst the legal debate surrounding copyrighted content on Pinterest, the popular site made efforts to automatically add citations to content from specific sources including Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, Etsy, and others.
MegaUpload Pushes Court to Dismiss Criminal Copyright Case (PCWorld)
MegaUpload filed a court brief asking a judge to decide next week whether to dismiss criminal copyright infringement charges, contending that they were never served a criminal summons.
Miami Heat Owner Sues Google, Blogger Over ‘Unflattering’ Photo (paidContent)
A minority owner of the Miami Heat filed a copyright suit against a blogger for posting a photo of him, and is also suing Google for refusing to take the photo down.
Las Vegas Man Given Prison Sentence in San Jose Court for Software Piracy (San Jose Mercury News)
A Las Vegas man convicted of one count of criminal copyright infringement has been sentenced to two years in prison, and ordered to pay $247,144 in restitution for illegally copying Adobe software and selling it on the Internet.
Keith Kupferschmid is General Counsel and SVP, Intellectual Property Policy & Enforcement at SIIA.