April 26 is World IP Day – an occasion for reflection on the centrality of intellectual property in our lives today.
As organized by the World Intellectual Property Organization, World IP Day explores the issues of our collective, global cultural future. Digital publishing media available at low cost and on-the-go mean global citizens have become global creators and global communicators, making World IP Day a matter of daily interest to us all.
“Access to culture has been reimagined by new technologies that have changed distribution of creative materials,” noted Ann Chaitovitz, the United States intellectual property (IP) attaché based in Lima, Peru.
Speaking with CCC’s Chris Kenneally from Colombia, where she is attending the two-week-long Bogota International Book Fair, Chaitovitz asserted that, “Copyright is working — many new [content delivery] models have emerged to satisfy consumer needs. But, we must always remember that if we fail to compensate creators, we will no longer have the works we love.”
As IP attaché, Ann Chaitovitz advises U.S. government personnel and national IP offices, and coordinates the US Patent and Trademark Office’s activities in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. Prior to arriving in Lima, Ann Chaitovitz specialized in domestic and international copyright law as an attorney-advisor at the USPTO, where she handled copyright and related rights issues in various international regions. In between stints at the USPTO, Ann was the executive director at the Future of Music Coalition (FMC), a national nonprofit education, research, and advocacy organization working on the challenging issues at the intersection of music, law, technology, and policy.
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