Robert lighthizer was nominated to the position of United States Trade representatives on 14 march 2017. The nomination appears to fit trumps stance on china, including on intellectual property protection.
At broadcasting and cable, John Eggerton points out that the Motion Picture Association of America ,praises the nomination ,quoting chairman and former senator Chris Dodd: “The United States Trade Representative plays a critical role in fostering America’s creative industries by negotiating and enforcing trade agreements that protect U.S. intellectual property rights and expand access to foreign markets for U.S. film and television.
Physical vs. Intellectual property
Property” belongs to the owner indefinitely, unless other conditions apply (sale, death, donation, etc.). My car is my car for as long as I want it to be. Proponents of the concept of “intellectual property” have sometimes portrayed users of their media as thieves and their media as if it were (physical) property. The MPAA’s You Wouldn’t Steal a Car ad campaign is very clear on this.
But criticism of this paradigm means relatively little to the MPAA and others. The U.S. government is interested in protecting patents and copyrights as property so that American interests can maximize profit from them. If bad actors in China or India disregard good practice and international agreements on copyrights and patents, then the diplomatic and economic forces of our government, through our
The limit of term blanket
The kind of nuance that advocates of intellectual property reform and “copyleft” licensing may wish to see become more widespread, however, could be helpful for the bottom line too. Rather than using a blanket term such as “intellectual property,” specificity can help clarify opaque concepts of creative rights. Copyright is a well-established legal concept that is recognized by many countries. So are patents.
One effect of the term is a bias that is not hard to see: it suggests thinking about copyright, patents and trademarks by analogy with property rights for physical objects. (This analogy is at odds with the legal philosophies of copyright law, of patent law, and of trademark law, but only specialists know that.) These laws are in fact not much like physical property law, but use of this term leads legislators to change them to be more so. Since that is the change desired by the companies that exercise copyright, patent, and trademark powers, these companies have worked to make the term fashionable.
