Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement Announced

As part of the Obama Administration’s launch of the first-ever Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement, Attorney General Eric Holder today emphasized the Department of Justice’s ongoing commitment to protecting U.S. intellectual property as central to America’s economic prosperity and public safety: The Department of Justice will assist in implementing three key components of the strategic plan:

• Ensure efficiency and coordination of our enforcement efforts across Federal, state and local levels, domestically and overseas, through means such as shared databases and increased coordination of investigation and training efforts;
• Enforce our rights internationally by combating foreign-based websites and other entities that violate our intellectual property rights, by working with our trading partners to increase enforcement and ensuring that we are supporting in businesses in overseas markets, including China;
• Secure our supply chain to stop illegal products from coming into the country by ensuring that law enforcement has authorities that it needs, by encouraging voluntary cooperation by the private sector to reduce infringement occurring in the physical and the online world and by vigorously investigating and prosecuting criminal activity, where warranted.

The Justice Department has a number of on-going efforts to protect intellectual property. For example:

• The Department Task Force of Intellectual Property: Created earlier this year by the Attorney General, the Task Force on Intellectual Property to focus on strengthening efforts to protect intellectual property rights through close coordination with state and local law enforcement partners as well as international counterparts. 
• Enhanced Intellectual Property Enforcement Efforts: The Department has been aggressively targeting intellectual property criminals. The Department has successfully prosecuted cases in every area of intellectual property crime including health and safety, trade secret theft and economic espionage, large-scale counterfeiting and online piracy.
• Industry and International Engagement: The Department has also taken steps to strengthen its relationships with key stakeholders in the fight against intellectual property crimes around the world by meeting with foreign law enforcement partners as well as leaders in the industry.  In the past several months, the Attorney General has met with foreign law enforcement officials from South America and Spain, industry CEOs and others to discuss the Department’s ongoing efforts and emphasize the need for greater coordination and cooperation in the fight against intellectual property crime.

Protecting U.S. intellectual property remains one of the top priorities of the Department of Justice. To learn more about our efforts, visit the website of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section: http://www.cybercrime.gov/. You can also check out more from the announcement of today’s strategic plan at WhiteHouse.gov.