ENFORCEMENT
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Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement<br />
SECTION 1<br />
the protection of existing ones, are critical to our<br />
economic and cultural life.<br />
Along with this remarkably positive story of<br />
economic growth, ingenuity, and creative expression is<br />
the growing scope of IP theft and the harms that flow<br />
from the unlawful exploitation of IP by third parties.<br />
This introductory section of the Joint Strategic Plan on<br />
Intellectual Property Enforcement (“JSP” or “Strategic<br />
Plan” or “Plan”) provides an overview of the current<br />
landscape of IP enforcement challenges that the creative<br />
and innovative communities—as well as policymakers<br />
and law enforcement authorities—face. 4<br />
This national strategy on intellectual property<br />
enforcement—the Joint Strategic Plan—is required by<br />
Federal statute. 5 That statute makes explicit that one<br />
of the key objectives of the Plan is “[i]dentifying and<br />
addressing structural weaknesses, systemic flaws, or<br />
other unjustified impediments to effective enforcement<br />
action against the financing, production, trafficking, or<br />
sale of counterfeit or infringing goods.” 6 This Strategic<br />
Plan seeks to do that in detail.<br />
Understanding these threats and impediments to<br />
effective IP enforcement at the macro-level—that is,<br />
their global scope and magnitude—and at the micro<br />
level—the nature of the complex schemes used by<br />
illicit actors to accomplish IP theft on a commercial<br />
scale—is essential. That understanding is important for<br />
the development and implementation of an effective<br />
strategy to minimize the unlawful exploitation and<br />
theft of IP and the harms that stem from such activities.<br />
The nature of these threats and harms should be<br />
well-documented, and our knowledge of them must<br />
continue to grow through research, information-sharing,<br />
and data analysis with each issuance of a new Joint<br />
Strategic Plan over the years to come. In this sense, the<br />
Plan represents part of a continuous process. Moreover,<br />
as technology continues to evolve, the Federal<br />
Government remains attentive to ensuring that lawful<br />
activities are not inadvertently captured by an otherwise<br />
necessary and robust IP enforcement system. 7 A system<br />
that encourages innovation and minimizes unintended<br />
consequences as technology evolves also helps to<br />
identify the illicit actors who might seek to exploit IP and<br />
infringe American products.<br />
As discussed below, the collective weight of<br />
research and reporting establishes that the global scope<br />
and magnitude of counterfeiting, commercial piracy,<br />
“[T]he value of theft of intellectual property from<br />
American industry… represents the single greatest<br />
transfer of wealth in history.”<br />
Gen. Keith Alexander (Ret.), former Director, National Security<br />
Agency, and Commander, U.S. Cyber Command<br />
and trade secret theft are staggering. As discussed<br />
below, one international organization estimates that<br />
international trade in counterfeit and pirated goods now<br />
constitutes 2.5 percent of world trade, while the recent<br />
targeting and theft of trade secrets from American<br />
industry has been described as representing “the single<br />
greatest transfer of wealth in history.” 8<br />
An investigation into the schemes and tactics used<br />
by the illicit actor may tell us what the overall size of the<br />
problem represents. At the micro-level, it is important to<br />
understand that entities that target and exploit IP rights<br />
employ a wide range of complex schemes to generate<br />
illicit profits and evade law enforcement detection.<br />
For example, illicit business models that infringe<br />
and exploit copyrighted content are often deliberately<br />
structured to conceal identities; to create redundancies<br />
so as to ensure operational resiliency in the face of<br />
enforcement actions; and to maximize dissemination<br />
of the unauthorized third-party content by various<br />
means described below. Business models centered<br />
on counterfeit trade often rely on manufacturing<br />
“safe havens;” the manipulation of trade routes with<br />
circuitous intermediary transit points; exploitation of<br />
Free Trade Zones; adoption of product concealment<br />
methods; fraudulent sales tactics; and opaque<br />
distribution structures, in order to deliver fake products<br />
to the market.<br />
Today, everything that can be faked, is being<br />
faked—from food and beverages to personal care<br />
products; automotive parts to medicines; fertilizers<br />
to consumer electronics; software to footwear and<br />
apparel; toys to critical technologies—subjecting<br />
consumers to greater instances of fraud and risks<br />
to health and safety than ever before.<br />
And as these dynamic threats continue to evolve<br />
and migrate across borders, we must not overlook the<br />
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