Today (June 20, 2013), the Office of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC) released its 2013 Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement [PDF].

Here’s a little background: Victoria Espinel is the chief officer of IPEC and serves the White House on matters of IP enforcement. In this capacity, she is tasked with coordinating the many federal agencies that work to prevent copyright infringement and counterfeiting. This covers everything from books, movies, and music to software, designer clothes and potentially harmful consumer items. Espinel’s post at the White House blog provides a good overview of her work and purpose of the Joint Strategic Plan.

Here at FMC, the part of intellectual property we pay the most attention to is copyright.

On Thursday, May 16, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition Policy and the Internet held a hearing entitled “A Case Study for Consensus Building: The Copyright Principles Project.”

Witnesses included Pamela Samuelson (University of California at Berkeley Law School); Jon Baumgarten (former General Counsel of the U.S. Copyright Office); Laura Gasaway (University of North Carolina Law School); Daniel Gervais (Vanderbilt Law School Intellectual Property Program); and Jule Sigall (Assistant General Counsel for Copyright at Microsoft). All of the panelists contributed to the Copyright Principles Project and its 2010 report [PDF].

Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) called the hearing as his first effort in a broader inquiry to examine specific aspects of current copyright law.

FMC’s written testimony, which was submitted to the Committee for the official record, makes the basic point that creators must be included in future hearings, as their perspectives will help inform any apparaisal of the impact of existing (or proposed) rules.

Not long ago, we reported on US Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante’s House Judiciary Committee testimony regarding “the next great copyright act.” Pallante described the need to update our existing laws to make them not only more comprehensible to the average American, but also work better in a rapidly-evolving technological landscape. We thought that her reasoning was sound and that she was focusing on the right areas, including the incredibly complicated licensing environment for music.

Clearly, the commitee was listening. Yesterday, at a Library of Congress event marking World Intellectual Property Day, Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) signaled his intent to review the Copyright Act (which was passed in 1976 and took effect in 1978), with an eye to optimizing the laws to reflect current realities. You can read Goodlatte’s full remarks here. (Self-referential bit — Goodlatte also gave a keynote at the 10th Future of Music Summit.)