CFP 2015: Internet content blocking by the ITC
Mike Godwin, General Counsel, R Street Institute: We are pushed to treat IP right violations as if they were subject to theft laws, or in ITC some kind of unfair trade practice. But we don’t just use the internet to transmit stuff about goods/things people have legal rights in. Digital platforms are by nature, unless otherwise designed, transnational. Gov’ts aren’t very comfortable with that. Natural economic impulse by industries to externalize costs of enforcement to government. This was SOPA/PIPA—effort to impose costs of enforcement on platform providers; same here w/ITC…
…Godwin: We’re seeing legal evolution and we need to find a limiting principle. We’re not seeing one here, which is the reason we’re marching out the prospect of everyone becoming an infringer once 3D printers are widespread. Everyone’s a potential mass © infringer now; not anticipated when laws were crafted; the same is about to happen to patenting. Even biopharma patents will be cheaply infringed. Don’t want to convert specialist court to huge presence.
