Intellectual Property Theft and Related Jurisdictional Issues

Intellectual property theft and related jurisdictional issues
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In a world marked with clear boundaries, the internet’s boundary-less and multiple jurisdictions create issues when an individual is reporting a theft of intellectual property. In the media scenario, applying of criminal law is complicated as determining the jurisdiction,and the venue of a case faces challenges. Firstly, in most cases, traditional criminal cases are filed where a defendant committed a crime or where the victim’s location. However, when a crime is committed through the internet, it is difficult to establish these two locations as the complainant may be in one area, the offender in another location, and the utilized media under investigation in a different location as well. Thus, determining which country or state to file a complaint becomes difficult (Buch, 2014). Secondly, the territory of practice defines the laws that adjudicate disputes. Thus, the theft may be a criminal offense in the location of the victim and legal in another such as that of the offender, thereby creating issues in reporting the case. Moreover, jurisdictional rules are indecisive when it comes to listening to intellectual property thefts,particularly of a media scenario. Hence, a plaintiff has to determine first, which court has the authority to decide their case, as it may be different from the courts in their area of residence(Buch, 2014).
In the regulation of intellectual property theft, various levels of authority play different roles. The local and state laws’ role in such a scenario is to criminalize the unauthorized use of an individual media product without their permission within the state’s jurisdiction. The federal law,on the other hand, protects an individual’s copyright to the media materials in the electronic world. In the scenario where it utilization is without the owner’s permission, the federal law protects an individual’s rights from misuse by terming t...