SAN JOSE, California -- Attorney General Michael Mukasey talked tough on intellectual property crime, telling Silicon Valley executives here Friday that the theft of their inventions poses a threat to the nation's "health and safety" and fosters terrorism.

"Every new technology we create can be abused -- whether it's a common identity thief looking for a new way to steal your bank account information, or an international terrorist looking to advance a murderous plot," the United States' top law enforcement official said here at TheTech Museum of Innovation.

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Mukasey said U.S. anti-counterfeiting authorities are coordinating with the European Union, Asia, Canada, and a host of other countries he termed "hacker havens" like China and Romania.

"FBI agents teamed up with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in an initiative targeting the distribution of counterfeit Cisco computer networking equipment manufactured in China," he said. "So far we've had more than 400 seizures of counterfeit hardware and labels with an estimated retail value of more than $76 million -- and the investigation is still ongoing."

He said the DOJ has trained and provided technical assistance to thousands of foreign prosecutors, investigators and judges in more than a hundred countries, and urged Congress to adopt legislation "that would criminalize attempted copyright infringement, and add important investigative tools such as granting courts the authority to issue wiretap orders in criminal counterfeiting and piracy investigations."

“Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. Section 106 of the 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to do and to authorize others to do the following:

• To reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords;
• To prepare derivative works based upon the work;
• To distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
• To perform the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works;
• To display the copyrighted work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work; and
• In the case of sound recordings, to perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

It is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the copyright law to the owner of copyright. These rights, however, are not unlimited in scope. Sections 107 through 121 of the 1976 Copyright Act establish limitations on these rights.”

“The way in which copyright protection is secured is frequently misunderstood. No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright… There are, however, certain definite advantages to registration.

Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created, and a work is "created" when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time. "Copies" are material objects from which a work can be read or visually perceived either directly or with the aid of a machine or device, such as books, manuscripts, sheet music, film, videotape, or microfilm. "Phonorecords" are material objects embodying fixations of sounds (excluding, by statutory definition, motion picture soundtracks), such as cassette tapes, CDs, or LPs. Thus, for example, a song (the "work") can be fixed in sheet music ("copies") or in phonograph disks ("phonorecords"), or both.

If a work is prepared over a period of time, the part of the work that is fixed on a particular date constitutes the created work as of that date.”

• Inertia, it takes time and money;
• Work is dynamic, so the question becomes “when is it done and ‘ready’ to be registered” (i.e. it’s in final form and won’t be changed);
• If you create a great deal of written or artistic work it may be cost prohibitive to simply adopt a strategy of registering all of your work. Like any business, you have to make cost/benefit decisions about when to register; and
• Not sure it yields sufficient value beyond normal copyright protection. The section “Ideas on protection strategies” may offer some thoughts as to when you should register your work and more importantly how you can protect your work prior to a formal registration. However, nothing can replace the advice and counsel of your attorney who can review your specific situation and guide you accordingly. Some general guidelines to consider:
• When in doubt, seek the advice of counsel;
• When your work is final and is going to be published, register;
• When your work is going to be disseminated to a large number of people or venues, register;
• If you need to file a lawsuit, register your work (it’s a requirement at this point); and
• Consult your attorney with any questions or to seek advice.

Fundamentally, the stuff we call "intellectual property" is just knowledge - ideas, words, tunes, blueprints, identifiers, secrets, databases. This stuff is similar to property in some ways: it can be valuable, and sometimes you need to invest a lot of money and labour into its development to realise that value.