House Judiciary Committee members are making changes to the proposed...
House Judiciary Committee members are making changes to the proposed Intellectual Property Attaché bill, a committee aide said Monday via email. If members reach a consensus on the language of the bill “we will then circulate a new draft based…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
on those changes to ensure that the development of this bill continues to be an open and transparent process.” The committee last week released a discussion draft of the proposed bill, which would task the Commerce Secretary with placing attachés in countries where they are likely to reduce infringement “in the U.S. market and globally,” advance IP rights of U.S. owners and those “who may be otherwise harmed” by IP violations, and further market access to U.S. interests. Public Knowledge had criticized the “secretly drafted” bill for containing language that was previously written in the ill-fated Stop Online Piracy Act (HR-3261). But the committee aide said this is not the case: “The bill that the committee currently is working on is a narrow piece of legislation to ensure better use of Patent and Trademark Office [PTO] funds. The current draft increases organizational efficiency at the PTO and moves the IP attaché program squarely within the PTO to ensure direct accountability of the IP attachés.”