The Gray Blog

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June 11th, 2008 Copyrights, United States none Comments

The House of Representatives has passed the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO IP) Act (H.R. 4279) a bill which creates a new position of “copyright enforcement czar” in the executive branch called, the Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative. The position is established in the White House to represent and advise the president on IP issues. The bill was introduced by House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers Jr. last December and passed the house with a strong vote.

Amongst the other features of the bill, it creates a special IP police with the right to seize property from alleged copyright infringers. The bill would also amend other laws as follows: (1) provide a safe harbor keeping minor errors in a copyright registration from preventing judgment for infringement; (2) allowing criminal prosecution of non-registered copyrights; (3) require courts to basically issue gag orders preventing disclosure of evidence in copyright infringement cases; (4) revise guidelines for civil damages in copyright infringement and counterfeiting cases; (5) enhanced civil and criminal provisions (including restitution) and (6) prohibit importing and exporting of infringing copies of copyrighted works.

While this law is heralded as providing additinal protection to copyright owners, it seems to ignore the experience of the accused in similar areas of law. In the drug area, for example, the accused are often deprived of their property through seizure for months or years while litigating cases which may, if the accused has the funds to support the litigation, be ultimately overturned without any remediation to the wrongly accused. Provisions in the law extending criminal protection to unregistered works and the mandated judicial gag order create potential dark holes of into which the inocent might wander.

The law provides no requirement that the consumer be provided with adequate notice of copyright or with publicly discernible methods for identifying infringing works. No companion bill has been introduced in the Senate.