President Obama today announced his pick to oversee copyright enforcement, putting an end to a nearly year-long guessing game in the intellectual property community.
Obama named Victoria Espinel, a lawyer and veteran Hill staffer with experience in the nonprofit and academic communities, to serve as the nation’s first Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, a position created by the PRO-IP Act signed into law last October.
In the shorthand of the day, Espinel will be generally known as the “IP czar.”
The role is designed to coordinate IP enforcement across the multiple federal agencies that have a hand in fighting piracy, including the Justice Department, the Patent and Trademark Office and the U.S. Trade Representative.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who authored the PRO-IP Act, praised Obama’s choice.