U.S. urged to ban foreign firms that steal intellectual property
The U.S. government should bar foreign companies that repeatedly steal or use stolen U.S. intellectual property from selling their products in the country, a new report recommended.
About US$300 billion worth of intellectual property is stolen from the U.S. every year, with 50 to 80 percent of the theft coming from China, according to the report, released Wednesday by the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, a bipartisan group of former government officials and business representatives.
The U.S. government needs to take a series of strong measures to protect U.S. IP because current measures are ineffective, commission members said. The U.S. needs to make it much more costly for nations to encourage IP theft and for companies to engage in it, said Jon Huntsman, co-chairman of the commission and former U.S. ambassador to China and Republican presidential candidate.
