The Alphabet Soup of Transborder Intellectual Property Enforcement

Abstract

In the past few years, policymakers, academic commentators, consumer advocates, civil liberties groups, and user communities have expressed grave concerns about the steadily increasing levels of enforcement of intellectual property rights. Many of these concerns relate to the "alphabet soup" of transborder intellectual property enforcement, which consists of the following: SECURE, IMPACT, ACTA, TPP, COICA, PIPA, SOPA, and OPEN.

Published in the inaugural issue of Drake Law Review Discourse, this short essay identifies six different concerns and challenges the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) poses to U.S. consumers, technology developers, and small and midsize firms. It then explores the ongoing negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and explains why TPP is likely to be more dangerous than ACTA from a public interest standpoint. The essay concludes by highlighting the challenges recently raised by two new pieces of legislation, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).