US TPP Negotiators Accused Of Bullying; Refusing To Budge On Ridiculous IP And Corporate Sovereignty Demands

from the i'm-sorry-for-my-country's-insane-negotiators dept

This is hardly a surprise, but more reports are coming out revealing that the US's ongoing strategy in negotiating the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) agreement is to not take into account the many, many concerns about the US's hardline, maximalist position on both intellectual property issues and efforts to give corporations sovereignty over national laws under the misleadingly named (and purposely boring) "investor state dispute settlements" (ISDS). You would think that with widespread dissection and concerns expressed about the leaked intellectual property chapter, that the USTR might possibly ease up on its crazy maximalist demands. Not so -- but that's to be expected when you have Stan McCoy as the lead negotiator on intellectual property issues. McCoy is a famed extreme maximalist on IP issues who has more or less admitted to having no interest at all in hearing from public interest groups, while lapping up any opportunity to parrot bogus claims from the industry. McCoy was the same guy behind the embarassing disaster known as ACTA, which flopped so miserably. You'd think he'd take a hint, but instead it appears he's decided to dig in his heels and make sure the US continues to live up to its reputation as an obnoxious bully.

Multiple reports have called out the US (and McCoy in particular) for its aggression and "bullying" in the negotiations. Others have accused the US of engaging in a "negotiation by exhaustion," in which US negotiators seem to figure if they just stand their ground forever, everyone will eventually be bullied into agreeing to the US's positions.

‘The US has adopted a strategy of exhaustion in its bullying of negotiators on the crucial intellectual property chapter to force countries to trade away health in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement negotiations in Salt Lake City’, according to Professor Jane Kelsey from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, who is monitoring the negotiations.

‘The US has stepped up its aggression as they move towards their "end point" of the TPPA ministerial meeting in Singapore from 7 to 10 December’, said Professor Kelsey.

[....] ‘This is a loaded game’, Professor Kelsey said. ‘McCoy sets the agenda and timetable. Negotiators are working from morning until late at night and preparing to work all night, if necessary.’

The second link above, from a publication in Australia, notes something similar and complains about the Australian government's seeming willingness to side with the US on these issues:

The United States has been accused of negotiation by exhaustion in last-minute talks in Salt Lake City ahead of the final ministers' meeting that will decide the makeup of the Trans Pacific trade deal between Australia and eleven other nations.

Information leaking from the closed official-level talks suggests the United States is giving no ground on questions of intellectual property and medicines and is insisting each nation sign up to so-called Investor State Dispute Settlement provisions that would allow global corporations to sue sovereign governments.

[....] “What is happening is not a negotiation,” said Patricia Ranald, Convenor of the Australian Fair Trade Network. “The United States is dictating the terms and it seems the Australian Government is not prepared to join other governments which are resisting these demands

While Stan McCoy plays out his own last stand game, pushing for policies that may help a few of his friends in the industry at the expense of the public, hopefully that last point -- about other governments resisting McCoy's attempt to bully them into a really bad deal -- stays true. An analysis of the positions on the IP Chapter, done by Gabriel Michael, highlighted how the US's position is a lot more isolated than it might like. That may explain the bullying behavior. It looks like the USTR is getting desperate, realizing its usual tricks and games aren't fooling most of the other negotiators. As Michael's analysis showed, the US and Japan (two of the strongest supporters of maximalism) appear to be fairly isolated -- issuing a lot more proposals that no one else supports.

Of course, the USTR is somewhat famous for its ability to start horse trading, promising bogus sweetheart deals if people just agree to awful language that will do massive harm to the public, so it's still something to be quite nervous about until any final text is revealed. Of course, just the fact that the USTR has still refused to reveal the text itself should be reason enough to recognize that this deal is a joke designed to screw over the public. Those acting in the interest of the public don't hide their efforts from the public.

Filed Under: bullies, copyright, corporate sovereignty, intellectual property, isds, negotiations, public interest, stan mccoy, tpp, ustr

Chief Judge Of Patent Court Compares Killing Bad Patents To Genocide

from the how-is-this-guy-in-charge-of-anything dept

Unfortunately, I have no link on this one, because someone sent me a copy of an article that is either not online or only behind a paywall somewhere, but at a recent AIPLA (American Intellectual Property Law Assocation) meeting, Judge Randall Rader, the chief judge of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), which handles all patent appeals, apparently complained about "vague language" in the most recent update to patent law, the America Invents Act, to have the US Patent Office's (USPTO) Patent and Trademark Appeal Board (PTAB) review more patents to dump bad ones. The recently proposed patent reform bill from Rep. Bob Goodlatte would expand this program. Now, anyone who recognizes the importance of getting rid of bad patents, knowing how bad patents can make the overall problem worse, should support this. But, not Judge Randall Rader. He compares it to genocide.

On one side of the PTO, he said, “You have 7,000 people giving birth to [intellectual] property rights,” while in the PTAB, there will soon be as many as 300 administrative patent judges “acting as death squads, killing property rights.”

I'm almost at a loss for words to describe just how painfully clueless this is. Frankly, a statement like this should disqualify someone from having anything to do with patents whatsoever. The purpose of patents is not to create "property rights." That is not the end goal at all. Rather it's to promote the progress by disseminating information. As a part of that, inventors are supposed to be given a limited amount of exclusivity, but only on things that are new and non-obvious to those skilled in the art, and only such that it creates the incentive to create that invention.

Arguing that the goal is to create property rights is just wrong. If that were the goal, we'd hand out many more property rights just for the hell of it. Why not create property rights on air? We could create so many damn property rights and, under Judge Rader's system, this would all be good. I'd get to toll him every time he wanted to breathe, but that's good because "property rights." Back here in the real world, we understand that property rights, by themselves, are not a be all, end all, but a means to an end: property rights are an incredibly important tool for creating efficient transactions and markets. But not everything needs efficient transactions and markets, and when property rights are poorly defined or are setup in places where they're not needed they can have a massive hindering effect on efficiency, markets and innovation.

That's the very problem that so many people (though apparently not Judge Rader) are concerned about with all of these bad patents. We should be happy to get rid of them, and not because it's "killing property rights," but because they're getting rid of economic inefficiencies that hold back innovation and progress.

Filed Under: intellectual property, patent trolls, patents, property rights, randall rader

The Old 'Partisan' Lines Don't Fit Nicely With Modern Civil Liberties And Tech Policy Issues

from the rethinking-partisanship dept

I've said a few times in the past that, as someone who doesn't identify with any particular group on the political/partisan spectrum, I've appreciated the fact that the issues I tend to cover aren't normally considered "partisan" and can often create "strange bedfellows." Copyright, for example, isn't an issue that fits into partisan lines at all (though, unfortunately, that's because for a long time, both major parties supported ever greater maximalism -- though that may finally be changing). In fact, when issues did become partisan, it often meant that all reasoned discussion and debate (and chance for actual forward motion) went out the window. Net neutrality was a good example of that. When it first came about, the discussions concerning net neutrality weren't partisan at all, but then the Democrats embraced it, and the Republicans lined up against it, and any reasoned or nuanced discussion or debate about it seemed to vanish.

Still, some issues are historically associated with one side or the other. Things like "national security" often seem to be an issue that the traditional "right" lines up behind, while "civil liberties" is an issue that the traditional "left" lines up behind. I'm old enough to remember when being a "a card carrying member of the ACLU" was used as an insult by Republicans to smear Democrats. Obviously, there are libertarians who are often (in my view, incorrectly) associated as being on "the right," who care deeply about civil liberties, but for the most part, the general stereotype is that Republicans on the "right" lined up behind strong national security fights and were less interested in civil liberties, while the Democrats on the "left" were "weak" on national security.

So it's at least a little bizarre to see this piece in Foreign Policy Magazine talking about how the Heritage Foundation, often considered the keepers of the Republican platform, refused to publish a paper that defended the NSA's surveillance efforts as perfectly legal and constitutional. The Heritage Foundation was a big supporter of the Patriot Act, and urged that the key provisions that enabled the dragnet data collection of phone records be renewed. Even more bizarre? When Heritage refused to publish the paper, Benjamin Wittes, of the Brookings Institution -- often considered a "liberal" think tank in DC -- jumped in to publish a version of the paper instead:

Cully Stimson, a senior Defense Department official in the Bush administration who now runs Heritage's national security law program, called Benjamin Wittes, the editor-in-chief of the national security blog Lawfare and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Stimson "asked me whether Lawfare might be interested in [the papers], and I was delighted to publish them," Wittes told The Cable. "We asked Steve to consolidate them into a single paper, and there were some subsequent revisions as well because of the document release that took place in the intervening period," Wittes said, referring to the government's decision in August to declassify a large number of documents about NSA programs.

Now, there could be a few different things at work here. For example, while Brookings is traditionally considered more on the liberal end of the spectrum, Wittes has long been a full on cheerleader for the surveillance state, so it was a natural fit. Similarly, Heritage is now under the leadership of Jim DeMint, who has long been identified as being more closely aligned with the more libertarian wings of the Republican Party. So this could be simply a case where the leanings of those two individuals resulted in what might be seen as a "strange bedfellows" situation with this paper.

Alternatively, there's an argument that rather than a sort of post-partisan issue that some of us hope these kinds of issues will become, this really is an overtly partisan issue, to the point that Heritage is less eager to support NSA surveillance by the administration because it's not "their guy" in the White House, The same may be true for those on the left who are willing to support the NSA's actions (even when they protested angrily about similar, and potentially less egregious, civil liberties abuses under George W. Bush) because it's okay with President Obama in charge. If this is true, it's not just incredibly cynical and short-sighted, but it's kind of depressing at the intellectual dishonesty of it all.

While either of those scenarios may be true, I'm still hopeful that more and more of these important issues having to do with technology and civil liberties policy will be viewed as post-partisan (which is very different than "bi-partisan"), in that they're important issues that should be dealt with on their own merits, rather than if you happen to prefer the red team or the blue team. Part of the problem that many of us who focus on things like innovation and civil liberties policy have with the way the political efforts break down is that neither party comes close to representing what we're interested in. If more of these important issues that are getting attention don't fit neatly along party lines, perhaps the political landscape can be reconfigured in a more effective way to actually deal with the issues of tomorrow, rather than mere bickering about the issues of the past.

Filed Under: civil liberties, conservative, intellectual property, left, liberal, national security, partisan politics, politics, right, think tanks
Companies: brookings, heritage foundation

Misleading Figures Used To Puff Up Importance Of Intellectual Monopolies In Europe

from the lies,-damned-lies,-and-statistics dept

We've noted before attempts to inflate the importance of copyright, patents and trademarks by including a bunch of other sectors that are only tangentially related to them when it comes to totting up their economic impact. For example, last year Mike wrote about a joint Department of Commerce/US Patent and Trademark Office "study" that included 2.5 million grocery store jobs in its definition of "IP-intensive" industries.

Now the Europeans are getting in on the act. The European Patent Office and the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market, responsible for trademarks and designs in Europe, have come out with a very similar study, which uses exactly the same technique as the earlier USPTO/Department of Commerce work, as James Love explains:

On September 30, 2013, the European Patent Office (EPO) and the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) published their own knock off version [of the US study], titled "Intellectual Property Rights intensive industries: contribution to economic performance and employment in Europe", which claimed that 39 percent of total economic activity in the EU is "generated by IPR-intensive industries."

Like the USPTO study, the numbers are intended to mislead rather than inform debate on intellectual property. The following is a quick rundown of some of the employment numbers in the report, for various IP categories.

Designs
For "design intensive industries," the largest employer group, by far, is "Wholesale of clothing and footwear," which is just one of several "wholesale" categories designed as "Design intensive industries."

Patents
For "patent intensive industries," the list of top industries is mostly made up of various manufacturing sectors. "Research and experimental development on biotechnology" is listed as having just 47 thousand EU jobs, out of more than 22 million "patent intensive" jobs in the study.

Copyright
For the copyright industry, the study claims there are over 7,049,405 jobs in the EU. But where are they? Book publishing is listed at 317,150, Sound recording and music publishing activities at 37,750, and Publishing of journals and periodicals just 13,300... Libraries and archives, on the other hand, are listed as a "copyright intensive industry" with 397.800 jobs -- 5.6 percent of all copyright intensive jobs.

The following 11 industries make up more than 55% of all jobs that are considered copyright intensive, even though copyright is only an incidental factor for most of their activities:

Advertising agencies 388.500 (5.1%)
Library and archives activities 397.800 (5.6%)
Media representation 797.900 (11.3%)
Other amusement and recreation activities 220.950 (3.1%)
Other information service activities n.e.c. 994.600 (14.1%)
Performing arts support activities 266.950 (3.8%)
Performing arts 85.800 (1.2%)
Public relations and communication activities 162.800 (2.3%)
Publishing of directories and mailing lists 231.500 (3%)
Translation and interpretation activities 152.000 (2.2%)
Web portals 191.300 (2.7%)

The European Commission lost no time touting the new study:

Internal Market and Services Commissioner Michel Barnier said: "I am convinced that intellectual property rights play a hugely important role in stimulating innovation and creativity, and I welcome the publication of this study which confirms that the promotion of IPR is a matter of growth and jobs. It will help us to further underpin our evidence-based policy making.

Of course, it does nothing of the sort, because the "evidence" cited here is so misleading as to be worthless. What Barnier really means is that he will continue to push the dogma that intellectual monopolies like patents and copyright are needed to stimulate innovation and creativity, and that he will ignore real evidence to the contrary, falling back instead on easily-debunked work like the present document from the EPO and OHIM.

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Filed Under: copyright, economics, europe, intellectual property, patents, trademark

Pirate Parties Blocked From WIPO After US & Other Countries Complained That They Don't Support WIPO's Mission

from the but-of-course dept

A little over a year ago, the Pirate Parties International (a group representing various different local Pirate Parties) asked for permission to have "observer" status at WIPO, the UN-based World Intellectual Property Organization, an operation somewhat renowned for its generally maximalist agenda. Last year, we noted that, after complaints from Swiss, French and US delegations to WIPO, the PPI request was delayed for an entire year. Well, that year is up... and WIPO has officially rejected the request while it approved all other requests except for the Pirates and Kenya Innovation Council.

Once again, US officials were among the folks trying to block PPI from becoming an observer, expressing concerns that the Pirate Parties "don't support the objectives" of WIPO. So who did get approved? Well, among others, there was the International Society for the Development of Intellectual Property (ADALPI). So it's not like WIPO rejected organizations that came into things with a clearly biased perspective. It just wanted to reject organizations whose position WIPO officials don't like. Ridiculously, as Jamie Love points out, the US State Department first talked about being able to discuss things "free from undue interference or censorship" and then went out and blocked the Pirate Parties from being able to join WIPO as observers. Hypocritical as always. And, if you're wondering, other political parties have been allowed into other UN organizations in the past, so it's not just because the Pirates are a political party.

Once again, we see that WIPO is not actually focused on determining the most effective intellectual property regime, but rather they'll push for protectionism and maximalism because a few countries benefit strongly from such positions. And they'll even go so far as to lock out organizations that have other viewpoints.

Filed Under: intellectual property, ngos, observers, pirate parties international, state department, wipo

What The Continuous Flourishing Of New Cocktails Can Teach Us About Intellectual Property

from the i'll-have-another dept

Ok, time to make a brief admission, oh Techdirt faithful. You see, we talk a great deal on this site about intellectual property and, while it certainly isn't a 100% thing, the most common topics in the discussion are movies, music, and books, particularly when it comes to copyright. Here's the problem: I'm not much of a customer for any of those things. I listen to almost no music as a talk radio junkie, my movie-viewing habits amount to seeing perhaps 3 films or so a year, and I write way more than I read these days. Even then, my reading habits tend to be from sources that are either free or in the public domain. So, while I care a great deal about intellectual property laws in this country, I tend not to have much interest in the practical applications as discussed here.

But that doesn't mean I don't still run into an IP law topic that does involve something I love dearly, something for which I could find no replacement in this little life of mine. Something that, were it to find itself suddenly locked up in a way that prevented me easy access, I might just lose my mind. I am speaking, of course, about alcohol. Cocktail recipes, thankfully, are famously not covered by copyright, which is why it's fun to see a legal explanation about how they're flourishing anyway.

If it has been accepted for at least two centuries that – absent state intervention – the fruits of intellectual labor are non-rivalrous and non-excludable, who but “a blockhead” would invest effort in concocting a commendable cocktail? Why, the free-riding barman next door is simply going to pilfer your tipple, put a foolish little umbrella in it and call it his own! Hence, new cocktails ought to be in scarce supply. But the problem is, they’re not. Even after we largely wiped out our collective wisdom of creative imbibing with 14 years of Prohibition, we’re knee-deep in cocktail recipes. Why is this?

Part of the answer can be found in Kal Raustiala and Chris Sprigman's wonderful book, The Knockoff Economy, which lawyer Matt Schruers goes into with a nice little nod. It isn't just the absence of copyright that separates the world of cocktails from major media entertainment, the entire culture of alcohol and bartending is like a music and movie bizarro world, where the entire culture depends on freely sharing drink recipes, garnishment strategies, and success rates with different drinks. The result is not only that great drinks find notoriety, new or otherwise, but the other result is industry norms in bartending springing up organically to take the role of what otherwise would be government intrusion.

Like fashion, the industries for both stand-up comedy and culinary art, including cocktails, see considerable development of new ideas. In both cases, industry norms – not laws – govern copying. The formal code of ethics of culinary professionals, Raustiala and Sprigman note, requires attribution. (This has not forestalled the occasional demand for a sort of recipe copyright, designed to overturn the conventional rule that recipes do not qualify for copyright.). A second cause for cocktail innovation is that recipes sell the product. Here, the intellectual labor is undertaken at a loss to promote a spirit. Today, many spirits manufacturers employ “brand ambassadors,” generally bartenders, to evangelize their product by devising and demonstrating new applications for it. Third, cocktails may be developed for reputational gain. A bartender may want his work to spread, because being known for his craft draws patrons to his establishment, and improves his job marketability. Of course, this why in cocktail arts, as in cuisine, attribution norms receive greater emphasis.

If any of this is beginning to sound familiar to you, it should be, because this is the exact route the music and movie industries are being pushed into. You could replace "cocktail" above with "recorded music" or "film" and most of the statement would still work without any further edits. Musical sharing and attribution to drive up notoriety, with recordings given away to promote scarce seats at concerts, while creative output is achieved to build up the brand as well. The synergy is quite striking.

But the real point is that creative output is flourishing without copyright. Of course no industry is exactly the same as another, but who is really ready to say they're sure the same wouldn't occur with music and movies? After all, copyright is supposed to "promote the progress" and it seems like there are places where we judge it to be unnecessary to achieve that goal. Why not try it in music and movies?

Filed Under: bartenders, competition, copyright, creativity, drinks, intellectual property, mixed drinks, recipes

Desperate To Sew Up TPP Negotiations At Any Cost, Politicians Agree All Future Meetings Will Be Completely Secret

from the slap-in-the-public's-face dept

We've been reporting for several years about the extraordinary levels of secrecy surrounding the TPP negotiations, where little information was released about what was going on, and there were few opportunities for representatives of civic and other groups to meet with negotiators to present their point of view. More recently, there have been some indications that this lack of transparency is fuelling increasing discontent among some of the participating nations.

In order to get the trade deal sewn up by the end of this year, and before resistance spreads further, the negotiators have decided to hold 'inter-sessional' meetings for the remaining unresolved areas. But as this article from Scoop explains, these won't be like routine TPP meetings, with their routinely unhelpful levels of opacity:

Detective work indicates that informal 'inter-sessional' meetings on six chapters are scheduled within the next four weeks -- all in North America.

' "Inter-sessional" is a misnomer', says Professor Kelsey, 'because they are not planning any more formal sessions. There will be no access for the media or stakeholders to these smaller meetings.'

'Past inter-sessionals have been shrouded in secrecy to ensure we can't find out what's happening and we don't have access to those negotiators who see value in talking with us.'

'The last three years of the TPPA have been widely condemned for their lack of transparency. The process is now going further underground'.

That is, rather than opening up TPP in response to widening criticisms, its negotiators will now be meeting in complete secret, presumably until they emerge with some kind of a deal, however bad. Since no information will be released about those gatherings behind closed doors, and there will be no opportunities to convey concerns to the participants, the public in whose name all these talks are taking place will have no way of knowing what is going on or of offering its views. It's the ultimate in arrogant, "we know best" negotiations where citizens are expected to accept what is given, no discussion allowed.

The last time this approach was used on this scale was for ACTA, which was ultimately rejected, largely because the European public took to the streets to express its outrage at the contempt being shown towards it by the negotiators. Interestingly, in Colombia people are already taking to the streets to protest against the effects of free trade agreements with the US, Europe and Canada, at least in part. Do the governments participating in the now-secret TPP negotiations really want to risk the same happening in their own countries?

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Filed Under: intellectual property, negotiations, secrecy, tpp, transparency, ustr

Vietnamese Officials Say New Censorship Law Is About Protecting Copyrights

from the copyright-as-censorship dept

For years we've pointed out that copyright law is often used for censorship, and plenty of authoritarian governments figured that out a long, long time ago. So, when the US goes around strongly advocating for stricter copyright laws, it's really not that surprising to see some countries turn around and use that to justify censoring of political speech and free speech. Last week, we wrote about how Vietnam had passed an incredibly broad new censorship law, which says that blogs and social media cannot "quote, gather or summarize" information from the media or government websites. Instead, people using such social media can only talk about things having to do with their own lives, rather than the news.

This is incredibly broad censorship, designed to massively stifle public participation, especially in the political process. So, wouldn't you know it? Among the ways that Vietnamese officials are defending this program is by claiming it's necessary to "protect intellectual property."

State media reported that the vice minister of information and communications, Do Quay Doan, said the curbs aren't designed to limit free speech but to manage the rapid growth of the Internet in Vietnam. Other officials said the rules also will protect intellectual property.

Expect to see this more and more as authoritarian governments realize that US pressure to ratchet up copyright laws gives them the perfect excuse to hide behind when they focus on censoring the public: just say it's to protect intellectual property, and frame it in the same language that the US is pushing, and it's a free ticket to censor nearly anything.

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, intellectual property, social media, vietnam

Companies Request Special Permission From Feds To Register Intellectual Property In North Korea

from the is-that-really-a-wise-use-of-your-time? dept

The folks over at NPR's Planet Money recently did a fun podcast discussing requests by US companies for permission to route around the sanctions imposed by the US government on North Korea in order to do business with North Korea. This came about after Planet Money got back a bunch of documents from a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request revealing the letters that various companies sent to the Office of Foreign Assets Control, basically begging for exceptions to the sanctions. The podcast mostly focused on the "novelty" items -- the guy who wanted to buy a single pair of North Korean jeans for his wife, the company that wanted to import North Korean beer, the stamp trading company that wants North Korean postage stamps because they're so rare, etc. But at the end of the podcast, they mention that among the stuff they didn't cover, were requests having to do with... intellectual property.

That got me interested, and so I went through the whole file and found that, indeed, there were a few requests from companies and lawyers who talked about the need to "protect their intellectual property" in basically every single country possible, so they wanted to be able to do so in North Korea as well. Leading the pack is Intel, who basically asks permission to secure its famed trademark in North Korea.

Intel respectfully requests that pursuant to 31 CFR Parts 50! and 510, OFAC provide a Specific License to Executive Order l35?O' Authorizing Intel Corporation and its appointed agents including Novak Druce Quigg LLP, to engage in all transactions to pursue, obtain, and maintain protection for Intel's trademarks and trademark rights in North Korea, and to remit funds to the Government of North Korea and other persons in North Korea in connection therewith, so long as such persons are not on the Specially Designated Nationals List (SDN)

All I can think is: what an incredible waste of time and money. It's not as if securing a trademark in North Korea means anything. This just seems to be a law firm trying to check off boxes in every single country possible, and being able to bill extra hours back to Intel. First of all, why does Intel care about protecting its trademarks in North Korea when it can't sell its chips into North Korea in the first place?

Of course, the only story we've had in the past about North Korea and intellectual property was back last year when WIPO got into some serious trouble for running a highly questionable program, defying UN sanctions in order to ship computers to North Korea, because some really clueless individuals at WIPO were sure that North Korea would use those computers to set up a database of worldwide patents to make sure that they weren't infringing on things (no, seriously) and didn't even think that the North Korean government might want those computers for other purposes (and not give a damn about what patents anyone held anywhere in the world). Somehow, I doubt that trademark protection is a major issue in North Korea either.

There's another, similar, request from big time law firm Kirkland & Ellis for a redacted client which goes even further -- claiming they're looking to protect "patents, trademarks and/or copyrights" in North Korea. Because North Korea is going to respect any of those? Really? I particularly love this line of reasoning:

In view of these general licenses and the general favorable policy toward authorizing IP protection-related activities they indicate, as well as OFAC's general favorable policy toward authorizing many legal services and the fact that protection of intellectual property rights of US companies is consistent with important US economic interests KTS requests OFAC's expedited approval of this request. Undue delay in providing such authorization could result in loss of important IP protection and related negative consequences...

Wait, seriously? If they can't get their trademarks, patents and copyrights in North Korea -- a country that we can't otherwise do any business with and who doesn't care at all about our trademarks, patents and copyrights -- there will be a "loss of protection"? No, there won't be any protection, because that doesn't happen in North Korea and it doesn't matter in the first place.

A similar argument is made by another law firm, Hogan Lovells:

Our U.S. and global clients wish to maintain their intellectual property protection in all countries including, as needed, sanctioned countries such as North Korea.

Later, they claim:

We are not aware of a policy reason to prohibit companies from fully protecting their intellectual property in North Korea...

Well, perhaps because it's entirely pointless and a complete waste of time, effort and money?

It really seems like this is the kind of thing that happens when you come at the world with a mindset that the legal "thing" -- a patent, a trademark or a copyright -- is the most important part of any invention, product or content, rather than the wider ecosystem and market that you're dealing with.

Filed Under: copyright, intellectual property, north korea, patents, trademarks