Intellectual Property and Waste

Tim Taylor:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Liveblogs the Casablanca Conference:

Street sellers of counterfeit brand-name perfumes and purses will soon see their illegal market overtaken by the Internet, a new US report on pirated intellectual property said Monday.The US Trade Representative's annual Special 301 report -- which designates the world's worst offenders of US intellectual property rights -- said there was "sustained growth" in copyright and trademark piracy "in virtually all formats."

This afternoon, Acting Deputy Secretary Rebecca Blank participated in an event at the White House to announce the Administration’s progress in cracking down on intellectual property (IP) theft crimes and the launch of a public education campaign intended to increase Americans’ knowledge of the threat these crimes pose to economic prosperity and public safety.  The campaign is entitled “Counterfeits Hurt. You Have The Power to Stop Them.” Counterfeit goods not only can cause harm to the safety of our families, but they also cause harm to our economy and to American businesses.  That’s because the success of the U.S. economy relies heavily on intellectual property; virtually every industry either produces IP or uses it. IP theft costs domestic industries an estimated $200 to $250 billion a year.  This robs American workers of hundreds of thousands of jobs. Only when American ideas and American inventions are protected, so that innovators receive the rewards from their creativity, can American business prosper and the American economy continues to   grow. It’s also important to remember protecting intellectual property has a multiplier effect, helping create jobs not only within the original firm that owns the IP but also within all the firms that it buys from and sells to.

I RECENTLY wrote a post on the lack of economic-driven anger among many Americans, that read in part:In America, the language of the angriest is very similar to that of the plutocrats themselves. Indeed, the complaint that today’s elite lack the noblesse oblige of the aristocrats of old, and are therefore risking public anger, seems to badly misread American public opinion. The middle class doesn’t want hand-outs from condescending rich people. They want moralistic language and complaints about deficits.

The government-wide effort includes adding 50 FBI agents to focus on intellectual property infringement. The Obama administration unveiled a government-wide strategy Tuesday to crack down on piracy and counterfeit goods, adding more than 50 FBI agents this year to tackle intellectual property abuses.

The Hedonic Calculus submits: In a sign that there is velocity in this economy, the trade deficit widened to $36.4B in November. That was above Wall Street's expectations. The wider trade deficit flies in the face of anyone expecting a "new normal" to come out of the financial crisis. The world order is rapidly returning to the way it was prior to September 2008. This is exactly what should happen considering that incentives haven't changed.