New group aims to be 'one-stop shop' for protecting intellectual property
IP House aims to protect businesses from intellectual property theft.
A new group is looking to be the "one-stop shop" for protecting intellectual property, and for protecting American businesses.
The IP House, established by former Homeland Security Investigations Executive Director Steve Francis and former Executive Vice President and Chief of Global Content Protection for the Motion Picture Association Jan van Voorn, seeks to have a "global approach" to combatting intellectual property theft.
Intellectual property theft is one someone steals an idea or invention from an individual or a company. It can often occur when someone steals things like copyrights or trademarks, according to Homeland Security Investigations.
Intellectual property gets stolen in a variety of ways, from counterfeit goods like apparel and footwear and also consumer electronics.
"When you look at intellectual property and intellectual property crime in general, it's never really one person in one country doing one thing. It really is spanning jurisdictions," Voorn said. "The multiple people involved, the money goes to a different country. It really needs this kind of global approach. And that really doesn't exist right now."
The group will focus on protecting not only large businesses, but also the group wants to work with "vulnerable" small- to medium-sized businesses who might not have any recourse when their intellectual property gets stolen.
"This new company, IP house, is going to enable everything to kind of come together, be integrated and effective, and not only just concentrated on kind of the health and safety aspect of intellectual property crimes, but really focus on everything from trademark copyright, patent, theft of trade secrets and have that capability to do it with some significant investments in integrating all of these kinds of capabilities together and create a one-stop shop that's going to be really impactful," Francis told ABC News.
The main focus of the company, Francis said, will be "dismantling and disrupting" the networks of bad actors "by working with law enforcement and private-public partnerships."
Francis said his time as a federal agent and leading the agency that does the most intellectual property crime investigations will be helpful in establishing the new company, and they will leverage the civil enforcement actions companies can take to stop the theft of property.
"Those federal prosecution thresholds are very high," he said. "One of our clients could say, 'I don't really want to invest significantly in a prosecution. I don't think it'll ever meet those thresholds. But maybe you guys can just do a disruption.'"
A disruption ranges from going to talk to someone who is suspected of making counterfeit goods to sending a cease and desist letter.
He said they will have partners on every continent in the globe.
Voorn said that at the end of the day, it's about keeping consumers safe.
"One big chunk of my motivation is keeping consumer safe," Voorn said -- and one way of doing it is making sure consumers know that when they put their information into a website selling fraudulent goods, it could be disastrous.
Voorn said it's about educating the public and would like to see IP House partner with universities to spread the word about counterfeit goods.
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