Theft of Foreign-Owned Intellectual Property in Latin America

Download or read book Theft of Foreign-Owned Intellectual Property in Latin America written by Kevin Fandl and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Microenterprises, mostly unlicensed, are thriving in Latin America, often due to their sales of unlicensed or counterfeit goods. Sales of soccer jerseys and shoes, movies, music, and other copyright-infringing products, fetch substantial returns for these vendors. Amid a culture where intellectual property law is largely ignored and where meager incomes limit the ability to pay for original goods, the market for pirated goods grows. Combine this with a legal system that places little priority on intellectual property rights and the result is an informal pirate's paradise. In this article, I explain the problem of copyright piracy in Latin America and how it affects rights holders based abroad. I go on to explain the cultural and legal barriers to protection of intellectual property and why enforcement of existing laws is exceedingly limited. And finally, I analyze the efforts made by rights holders to protect their property and why these efforts will ultimately fail. In my conclusion, I will describe what I believe might pave the way to an equitable parlay between rights holders and pirates.