Enforcing Intellectual Property Theft

President Donald Trump’s first action on intellectual property is buried within his newly released Presidential Executive Order on Enforcing Federal Law with Respect to Transnational Criminal Organizations and Preventing International Trafficking.   The executive basically orders the already existing inter-agency Threat Mitigation Working Group to delve further into its already-existent mission of fighting transnational organized crime.  The primary action item is a report due in June 2017 that discusses the extent of penetration of those organziations into the US and mechanisms for combating their crimes.

The IP part is small:

Policy. It shall be the policy of the executive branch to (a) strengthen enforcement of Federal law in order to thwart transnational criminal organizations and subsidiary organizations, including criminal gangs, cartels, racketeering organizations, and other groups engaged in illicit activities that present a threat to public safety and national security and that are related to, for example . . . intellectual-property theft.

Theft here suggests a crime – and so we are probably talking primarily about criminal copyright infringement and identity theft.