White House Releases Second Joint Strategic Plan for IP Enforcement

Today, the IPEC (Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator) announced that the White House has released its second Strategic Plan for IP Enforcement. The IPEC's blog provides more information about what is included in the update: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/06/20/intellectual-property-key-driver-our-economy. Among the myriad updates in this report are the following:

• Report on private sector "voluntary" agreements to combat counterfeiting and piracy:
  1) Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies (jointly established by American Express, Discover, eNom, Facebook, GoDaddy, Google, MasterCard, Microsoft, Neustar, PayPal, Visa and Yahoo!);
  2) Joint initiative by AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon along with music labels and movie studios to voluntarily reduce online piracy;
  3) Creation of best practices by payment processors such as American Express, Discovery, MasterCard, PayPal and Visa to withdraw payment services for online sales of counterfeit and pirated goods; and
  4) The Association of National Advertisers' and American Association of Advertising Agencies' joint leadership pledge not to support online piracy and counterfeiting with advertising revenue (see MPAA's report about the issuance of this pledge);
• Of the 20 legislative recommendations made in the Administration's March 2011 White Paper on Intellectual Property Enforcement Legislative Recommendations, seven of them have become law.

The Administration re-articulated its continuing concerns about the following areas: 1) abusive patent litigation tactics that pose "a significant and growing challenge to innovation" and is seeking introduction and passage of various patent reform recommendations; 2) efforts by foreign governments to require the transfer of trade secrets or other proprietary business information as a condition of market access or the ability to do business in that country; and 3) changes in technology, social norms, business models and global distribution models that further complicate IP enforcement concerns (such as cloud computing, mobile computing, data storage, information security and 3D printing). It reports having made strides already to address these concerns, but recognizes that more work remains to be done.

The USPTO simultaneously issued a request for public comment about Voluntary Best Practices to curb online counterfeiting and piracy. A summary of the Notice and its components can be found here: http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=PTO-C-2013-0036-0001; the actual Federal Register Notice is here: http://www.regulations.gov/contentStreamer?objectId=09000064813341ca&disposition=attachment&contentType=pdf. According to the Notice, comments must be submitted by July 22, 2013.

The first Strategic Plan was announced in 2010. Prior Privacy and IP Law Blog posts about the IPEC and other IP enforcement initiatives/updates can be found here: IPEC.