Featuring Susan Wilson, Director of the Office of Intellectual Property Rights – U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration.
This is part one of a two-part series. In this segment Susan provides a basic introduction on intellectual property rights suited for small business owners who have or who are considering taking their business global. Topics include: patents, trademarks, copyrights, how to protect from piracy, and where to go for help to learn more about protecting and enforcing your intellectual property rights in foreign markets.
Transcript:
Ron Johnson: Taking your small business global can be exciting. But before you venture into international trade, do you know how to protect your intellectual property rights? Now if your answer is no, then today’s program is just for you. Hello, I’m Ron Johnson with the U.S. Small Business Administration, Your Small Business Resource, and with me today is Susan Wilson, Director of the Office of Intellectual Property Rights at the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration. Welcome, Susan, we’re so glad to have you join us today to help us sort out this complex topic.
Susan Wilson: Thank you so much, Ron. It’s a real pleasure to be here today.
Ron Johnson: Susan, let’s get started. We will divide the interview into two parts. Today, we’ll provide a basic instruction on intellectual property rights. And then in our next segment, we will tell you about the tools and services the U.S. Government offers small businesses to help them navigate intellectual property rights while conducting international trade.
Susan Wilson: Okay, first of all, just starting with intellectual property rights for those of your listeners who may not be aware, we’re talking about basically products of the mind. So any kind of innovative, commercial, artistic creation, invention. We’re talking about unique names, symbols, or logos that people use on their goods or in connection with their businesses. These are called trademarks. The Coca-Cola is a trademark, IBM, Nike, any word, name, or symbol.
We’re also talking about copyrights. Copyright is the right that you have when you make a song or video or you write a book, a poem. Copyrights are a little bit unique because copyrights exist worldwide as long as you can show that you actually created the product or the work, let’s call it.
Patents and trademarks, trademarks are what I just discussed a moment ago. Patents are, of course, what protect inventions, new, useful, non-obvious inventions, processes, chemical compositions, and things like that. Patents and trademarks tend to be what we call geographical. So you have to get protection in the foreign market. Copyrights, you can have protection in most foreign markets just by virtue of the fact that you’ve created the work. And so there are some complexities there. But that’s very important to understand that these are really what we’re talking about: patents, trademarks, and copyrights.
To a lesser extent, we deal with trade secrets. Probably the most famous trade secret is the Coca-Cola formula. So usually folks that are dealing with trade secrets know pretty much what they’re dealing with, so we’ll emphasize most of our discussion on patents, trademarks, and copyrights.
Ron Johnson: What are some of the complexities, Susan, a small business owner should consider when planning to expand into international trade?
Susan Wilson: Well, basically what you’re dealing with is any time a product is popular, you have people in foreign countries and sometimes even here in the United States who want to capitalize on the popularity of your product by making knockoffs. By making copies, and selling them usually at a cheaper price than the price at which a U.S. company would sell its own product. Because, of course, pirates and counterfeiters, as we call them, they don’t have to invest in producing the original. All they need to do is find the resources to make the copies and distribute the copies. So piracy, which is a theft of copyrights, and counterfeiting, which is usually what we call unlawful copies of trademarks, really pose a tremendous threat to American businesses. Our exporters large and small face unfair competition abroad through this misconduct. There are all kinds of legal loopholes and issues to be dealt with. You really have to be smart when you’re exporting. And these counterfeiting and piracy operations really pose health and safety risks to consumers, not only in the United States but abroad.
And so these are really some serious issues that need to be dealt with. Most of our small businesses, American small businesses, really don’t understand that their trademarks and patents that they might have here in the United States won’t protect them overseas, that they really need to register in those markets. I think a lot of particularly our smaller exporters really don’t understand how to do that. And we’ll talk later about some tools that are available to help. We really encourage people to be smart to understand the markets they’re going into. And to understand the need for intellectual property protection and to try to do as much, in advance of exporting, as they possibly can.
A lot of businesses it should be part of -- IPR should be part of your business plan. You should protect yourself in any way that you can, including being smart about your online presence. A lot of these folks that are doing this business overseas will look at people’s websites and would steal a lot of material right from your websites. So you need to be smart all the way around, not only your physical business but also your internet presence.
Ron Johnson: So Susan, what role does the U.S. Department of Commerce play in international trade and intellectual property rights protection and enforcement?
Susan Wilson: Oh that’s a great question, Ron. As you may guess, there are several agencies that are involved in various aspects of trade and exporting. There are different agencies that have different parts of the intellectual property piece. Here at the Commerce Department where my office sits, my office is the Office of Intellectual Property Rights, we sit within the International Trade Administration of the Commerce Department in the unit called the Market Access and Compliance Unit. We basically work with U.S. firms to identify and overcome trade barriers, resolve trade policy issues, and ensure that our trading partners are fully meeting their obligations under their agreements. What this means for our businesses is, if you are confronting an issue overseas that is related to some sort of government action, the government is either not living up to its trade agreement obligations by providing you with opportunities to register your rights in a timely manner. Or there are some obstacles to enforcing your rights. Or there are other issues related to your intellectual property rights basically preventing you from entering that market in a free and transparent way; there may be something that Commerce can do to help.
My office, Commerce at large, regardless of whether your issue is intellectual property rights or other types of issues, my office of course focuses specifically on the IPR challenges. What happens is a company will face an issue overseas and will be struggling in a particular market with somebody copying their trademarks or copying their books or music or their movies. And they’ll approach our office, explain what the situation is, and then we gather a team of trade specialists and intellectual property experts to basically diagnose the issue and do some triage. We talk with other agencies. We talk with our embassies overseas. And we really are trying to understand what the problem is and what steps the right owner can take and what steps the U.S. Government might be able to take to try to resolve the situation.
Ron Johnson: So, Susan, in closing, what will our audience learn in part two of this program?
Susan Wilson: Well, you know what? We set out kind of some of the problems. And it may seem like a bleak picture and certainly it’s very serious and something to take into account when you’re thinking of exporting. But I must say that there is a lot that we’ve tried to do both in my office and throughout the Federal government to provide resources and tools that people can use so that they can educate themselves. They can get some help. They know who to turn to. And mostly that they’re smart.
Customs ran something a couple of years ago when you are traveling. It’s called "Know Before You Go." This is a kind of a "Know Before You Go" in the export world. And our resources are all available, free of charge, on our website which is www.stopfakes.gov and so that’s our general website and if you put a slash and small business after that so www.stopfakes.gov/smallbusiness that will take you to some more specific small business tools. Everything there is available free of charge and encourage folks to give it a look.
Ron Johnson: Our thanks to Susan Wilson, director of the Office of Intellectual Property Rights at the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration. Now to learn more about the Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration and their role in intellectual property rights, go to www.stopfakes.gov. That’s www.s-t-o-p-f-a-k-e-s.gov. And for more information on SBA’s exporting programs and services, go to www.sba.gov. So until next time, I’m Ron Johnson with the U.S. Small Business Administration, Your Small Business Resource.
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