Other U.S. Government agencies bring foreign government and private sector representatives to the United States on study tours to meet with IPR professionals and to visit the institutions and businesses responsible for developing, protecting, and promoting IPR in the United States. One such program is the Department of State's International Visitors Leadership Program, which brings groups from around the world to cities across the United States to learn more about IPR and related trade and business issues. In addition, U.S. Government agencies, such as the Department of State and the U.S. Copyright Office, conduct conferences and training symposia in Washington, D.C. In March 2012, for example, the Copyright Office, with co-sponsorship from WIPO, hosted an international training symposium for representatives from 17 developing countries and countries in transition on emerging issues in copyright and related rights.
Overseas, the U.S. Government is also active in partnering to provide training, technical assistance, capacity building, exchange of best practices, and other collaborative activities to improve IPR protection and enforcement. For example:
- In 2012, GIPA provided training to 9,217 foreign IPR officials from 130 countries, through 140 separate programs. Attendees included IPR policy makers, judges, prosecutors, customs officers, and examiners, and training topics covered the entire spectrum of IPR. Post-training surveys demonstrated that 69 percent of all attendees reported that they had taken some steps to implement positive policy change in their respective organizations.
- GIPA also has produced seven free distance-learning modules, available on its website in multiple languages (English, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Russian). There have been over 32,000 hits on those modules since being placed on our site in early 2010.
- In addition, the USPTO's Office of Policy and External Affairs provides capacity building in countries around the world, and has concluded agreements with more than 40 national, regional, and international IPR organizations, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO), WIPO, and the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), to partner on IPR training activities. These partnerships help ensure that capacity building and training efforts are demand-driven and meet the particular needs of each organization and trading partner.
- The Department of Commerce's International Trade Administration (ITA) collaborates with the private sector to develop programs to heighten the awareness of the dangers of counterfeit products and of the economic value of IPR to national economies. Additionally, ITA develops and shares small business tools to help domestic and foreign businesses understand IPR.
- In 2012, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), through the National IPR Coordination Center (IPR Center) and in conjunction with INTERPOL, conducted training programs in Ecuador, Panama, India, South Korea, and Taiwan. ICE-HSI trained officials from Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay, as well as police
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