FY 12 Intellectual Property Theft Enforcement Program

This program is authorized by the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012 (Pub. L. 112-55) and informed by section 401 of Public Law 110-403, which authorizes the Department to provide funding to support state and local intellectual property enforcement efforts. The Intellectual Property Theft Enforcement Program is designed to provide national support and improve the capacity of state, local, and tribal criminal justice systems to address intellectual property criminal enforcement, including prosecution, prevention, training, and technical assistance. This program is generally informed by section 401 of Public law 110-403, which authorizes the Department to provide funding to support state and local intellectual property crime enforcement efforts.

The New York County District Attorney's Office (DANY) is the local prosecuting agency for the borough of Manhattan in New York City. As the nature of crime changes with the rapid growth of technology, so too must the prosecutorial efforts of DANY change. Street-level counterfeit operations are increasingly supplied and funded by web-based counterfeiting networks, which provide an unprecedented level of anonymity for twenty criminals. New York County is in a unique position to target and track many websites which sell counterfeit goods and also include those that ship products from other countries. Oftentimes these same websites are often hosted by internet service providers (ISPs) in the United States and New York County specifically.

DANY is requesting grant funding to establish an Intellectual Property Cybercrime Enforcement Program. The goals of the program are to confront the sale and distribution of counterfeit and pirated items through the internet, target websites and vendors with both physical and virtual ties to New York County, and track payments for counterfeit goods being processed by domestic financial institutions. DANY will assign a coordinator to oversee a set of assistant district attorneys, investigators, and analysts in pursuing IPR cybercrime related cases. The information collected which pertains to defendants and trends will be shared with partnering local, state, and federal task forces, and agencies as appropriate.

The DANY IPR Cybercrime Enforcement Program would achieve outcomes including: 1) more numerous and aggressive prosecutions of IPR violators; 2) more advanced sentencing; 3) the elimination of large-scale counterfeit schemes, including online organizations; 4) the production of forfeiture and tax revenues for New York City, New York State, and the U.S. Government; and 5) the provision of intelligence to other law enforcement entities to enhance their own investigations and cases. CA/NCF