Trademark Counterfeiting Act Of 1984: What Is Infringement?

Piracy has become a major issue in the United States. For every motion picture that has been featured in theaters also has been pirated onto the Internet the next day, and for every new musical album that is released, yet there is a free torrent file of the album within the same hour. Even though these online pirates steal music and movies from other companies and make a drastic profit, yet these “rogue” websites receive 53 billions visits a year from across the globe according to Creative America. The persistence of the thieves that break copyright laws of the productions has lead the entertainment business to place a definitive complaint to the U.S. government of the constant notion of piracy. While the notion of piracy was not left

As globalisation brings in new and various products, counterfeit goods also spread quickly. This has a negative influence on local retailers and trademark owners by taking away part of their local market share, taking advantage of the designs of a brand’s

Trademark rights can be acquired by being the first to put the mark to use in commerce

The Lanham Act defines the term trademark to include “any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination thereof . . . to identify and distinguish his or her goods . . . and to indicate the source of the goods, even if that source is unknown.” The United States Patent and Trademark Office and the U.S. federal courts have interpreted the definition liberally allowing a breath of nontraditional marks to be registered if it.

Misuse of copyright is when the copyright holder misuses the legally-backed rights in order to extend its dominance regarding the use of the copyright work to an extent which may not be acceptable when kept in perspective with law and equity.

SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) was a bill proposed in the House of Representatives that aimed to tackle the growing problem of online piracy and copyright infringement. It targets foreign-based websites that contain any form of unauthorized copyright-infringing material such as movies or music by giving content-creators the right to stop any US businesses from providing payment services, advertising, or even dealing with prosecuted websites; essentially blacklisting and hiding these websites to any US visitors. The bill is split into two main sections: “Combating Online Piracy”, which provides tools for rights holders to protect their content, and “Additional Enhancements to Combat Intellectual Property Theft.”, which criminal law which as applies to intellectual property rights and increases punishments for leaking government information. SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) was not enacted because of very strong opposing public opinion, its highly broad and unconstitutional policies that restricted speech, and presidential leadership against the bill.

In the past, there have been many disagreements in the trademark standpoint. Examples of this would include the Slants, a Portland-based Asian-American dance band, as well as the Washington Redskins. Throughout the years, there have been many individuals that have stood for Trademark office to rule against the Washington football team and withhold a Federal trademark for their offensive moniker. Although the term “Redskin” is offensive to many individuals, the 1st amendment as well as role of the trademark office should have allowed them to keep their name and trademark.

Under 15 U.S. Code § 1127, a trademark protection is granted on words, symbols, or

The term “Intellectual property” is the ideas, words and the contexts created by someone that becomes that personal belong. Where “plagiarism” is claiming someone’s work or ideas as your own without giving appropriate acknowledgement to the author’s work (page. 225).

Free trade agreements are in force all over the world today. A free trade agreement is an “agreement between two or more countries where the countries agree on certain obligations that affect trade in goods and services, and protections for investors and intellectual property rights, among other topics” (www.naftanow.org, 2013). These agreements are essential for the countries if they want to trade goods and services with each other without having to be bothered with each other’s laws and regulations.

Intellectual property represents ideas created by minds of humans that require certain rights for their use. Intellectual property gives companies a competitive advantage and attracts the attention of other business partners and investors (Lee, 2016). With such importance, it is necessary for the law to protect these ideas from being used by unauthorized individuals. To shield from this, trade secrets, patents, and copyrights are used to protect the ownership of intellectual property (Legal Information Institute).

Online piracy is commonly referred to as a threat to businesses in the creative industries. The WTO Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (a.k.a. “the TRIPS” agreement) defines piracy as:

The rise of the Internet era opened the whole new market for traditional media full of opportunities as well as threats. Online piracy being one of them because the music and film industry loses £5.4bn in a year and if it was reduced by 10% it could have created up to 13 thousand jobs in the UK. There are various attempts taken to fight with online piracy; a case study of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement will be considered as well as other legislations attempting to regulate copyrights in the Internet. This

Copyright infringement is the unauthorized use of copyrighted material in a manner that violates one of the copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works that build upon it.

Firstly, with laws to protect intellectual properties, it prevent and stop other companies from commercially using the protected intellectual properties in the marketplace, allowing the owner company to control the usage of their original