Trump Administration Releases its Joint Strategic Plan for IP Enforcement

On November 9, the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC) released the 2020 to 2023 Joint Strategic Plan by coordinated federal agencies for promoting and protecting intellectual property (IP) rights. 

The IPEC-developed plan provides an overview of recent and ongoing strategic efforts by the Trump Administration in all areas of IP policy, including copyrights. And it addresses domestic IP policy issues as well as initiatives to ensure that Americans' IP rights receive protections internationally. Included in the Joint Strategic Plan are efforts to better secure copyrights from infringement – particularly online infringement:

The [U.S.-China] Phase One Agreement requires China to provide effective and expeditious action against infringement in the online environment, including by requiring expeditious takedowns and by ensuring the validity of notices and counter notices. It also requires China to take effective action against e-commerce platforms that fail to take necessary measures against infringement. The United States and China agreed to address additional intellectual property issues, including with regard to unauthorized camcording of motion pictures and copyright protection for sporting event broadcasts, in future negotiations... 

 

The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security will continue to aggressively investigate and prosecute individuals and corporations that engage in large-scale online copyright piracy (through illicit streaming services and anti-circumvention devices), which not only violates the rights of copyright holders but also often involves the commission of other serious crimes such as money laundering and tax evasion… In addition, the Justice Department, DHS, and other Federal agencies (as appropriate) will also continue to work with foreign law enforcement and other governmental offices to prosecute and otherwise prevent large-scale online copyright piracy, including the large-scale online pirates that are identified in USTR’s annual List of Notorious Markets... 

 

The Department of Homeland Security (U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)) will continue to modernize, update and expand the existing e-Recordation program, which provides right holders the opportunity to record their registered trademarks and copyrights to receive enhanced border enforcement of the IP. DHS will continue to provide education and outreach to the industry regarding the critical importance of obtaining trademark and copyright recordations in order to stem the flow of infringing goods into the United States. DHS will continue to educate personnel at all Ports of Entry on the importance of IP enforcement, and arm them with the necessary tools to detect and interdict infringing goods at the border...

 

The United States will continue to support and encourage the broader and more regularized adoption of voluntary "Trusted Notifier" agreements involving Internet domain registries. These agreements have proven effective in removing websites that engage in large-scale copyright piracy, as has been demonstrated in the implementation of the agreements that the MPAA (now, the MPA) entered into in 2016 with the Radix and Donut registries.

We will likely have more to say on the Joint Strategic Plan – particularly its call for further examination of the copyright "notice-and-takedown" system for removing expeditiously infringing content from Internet websites. Free State Foundation President Randolph May and I wrote about the need for reforms to the "notice-and-takedown" provision in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in our June 2020 Perspectives from FSF Scholars paper, "Copyright Office Report Should Spur Modernizing the DMCA."