President Bush today signed legislation originally authored by Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) to protect American innovation and crack down on foreign counterfeiters who steal U.S. intellectual property to gain an unfair competitive advantage in the global economy.

“This is an enormous victory for this country’s innovators and a wake-up call for foreign counterfeiters who believe they can steal our ideas with impunity,” Senator Bayh said. “American businesses lose $250 billion every year because of intellectual property theft. The U.S. auto industry estimates it could hire an additional 200,000 workers if we eliminated the trafficking of counterfeit auto parts. This new enforcement regime will treat the theft of American ideas as the serious threat to our economy that it is.”

The Bayh-Voinovich plan will significantly increase resources for Department of Justice programs to combat IP theft and provide coordination and strategic planning of federal efforts against counterfeiting and piracy.

Title IV of the legislation, authored by Senators Bayh and Voinovich, creates a Senate-confirmed Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator. It requires the White House Office of Management and Budget to improve interagency coordination and oversee budgeting of the effort. It also creates an Intellectual Property Enforcement Advisory Committee to replace the looser, interagency approach currently responsible for coordinating IP enforcement efforts.

The President’s signing of the Bayh provisions as part of a broader IP enforcement bill (S. 3325) is the culmination of a three-year push by Senators Bayh and George Voinovich (R-OH) to protect American businesses and workers by safeguarding copyrights, patents and trademarks.

More than 600 ideologically diverse organizations representing industry and labor—including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the United Auto Workers—came together in support of the Bayh-Voinovich approach.

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