International Efforts Are Achieving Credible IP Enforcement Even Amid Chronic Abuse

摘要

End-of-year wrap-ups or early-in-the-year horoscopes have a value beyond just summarizing major events and trends. No matter what the subject, such features invite larger perspectives and a useful escape from the noise of everyday news. That news can be very deceptive. Intellectual property enforcement is no exception. Each new reported confiscation of goods or each new hollow-sounding promise by a foreign government seems only to confirm a world at cross-purposes in which treaties are unenforceable and brand names are sitting ducks. "Piracy" is a wonderfully apt term for what goes on. The predicament of patent holders and copyright holders is comparable to 18th century businessmen whose cargoes at sea were, as a cost of doing business, always subject to the unwanted attentions of a Blackbeard or Captain Kidd.