What happened was, is a group, a subset of APEC countries came together and said let's see if we can create a high-standard agreement that is dealing with tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade, but let's also incorporate a whole range of new trade issues that are going to be coming up in the future -- innovation, regulatory convergence, how we're thinking about the Internet and intellectual property.
These also open new concerns about lost intellectual property, Internet scams, and long-term return on investment.
Over the past two decades, ordinary Americans have tried to enforce protection of their intellectual property on the internet, but often without success.
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Before dumping a co-founder, also make sure you have access to key information, such as the firm's bank account and Internet passwords, and that any intellectual property critical to the business is owned by the firm and not the person you're planning to push out, says Anthony McCusker, a partner with law firm Goodwin Procter in Menlo Park, Calif.
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The six groups are: organizations that register country-code top level domains (such as .de, .uk or .jp, ), those that register generic top level domains (such as .com, .org and .net), commercial and business entities, intellectual property interests, Internet service providers and other providers of Internet connectivity, and registrars (the companies that register the names under which individuals or corporations wish to be known on the Web, such as www.greeneurope.org or www.ibm.com.).
In her testimony last week before the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet, Register Pallante noted the need to review the efficacy of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
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But though Jeffords' decision changes the political landscape in Washington, existing bipartisan agreement on many technology policy issues means that there are likely to be few immediate, substantive shifts on questions such as an Internet sales tax, online privacy, intellectual property or telecommunications regulation.
My guess is the various owners of the intellectual property leaking onto the Internet will admit defeat and form an uber-licensing agency, like ASCAP, that will collect a monthly fee in exchange for nearly universal access to music, movies and other forms of entertainment.
"It's very common for companies to pick off the easier companies first, " says John Dozier, an intellectual property lawyer who specializes in Internet cases.
One suggestion, supported by telecoms firms, consumer groups and Internet activists, is that the section covering intellectual property should be excluded from the convention, so that the agreement applies only to disputes over the sale of goods and services.
Are you certain your employees do not send intellectual property or private data over any Internet channel, including Gmail and Facebook?
British Conservative MEP Sajjad Karim warned that there needed to be a greater understanding of intellectual property, pointing out that the internet-based economy was worth almost 10% of a country's GDP.
In 2012, New Jersey-based intellectual property owner Suffolk Technologies sued Google and US internet service provider AOL over two patents it had acquired from BT.
This led Prime Minister David Cameron to promise last year that Britain's intellectual property laws would be reviewed "to make them fit for the internet age".
The firms range in size from a few people, such as IdeaMarket, a firm in Austin, Texas, that plans to serve as an on-line broker of intellectual property, to more than a hundred in the case of CitySearch, which creates Internet guides to cities and regions.
Protection of intellectual property and taxation are traditionally the domain of governments and given the global nature of the Internet, governments must develop a co-ordinated approach to prevent a patchwork of potentially inconsistent rules.
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