Intellectual Property: Better Data Analysis and Integration Could Help U.S. Customs and Border Protection Improve Border Enforcement Efforts
GAO-07-735
Published: Apr 26, 2007. Publicly Released: Apr 26, 2007.
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Highlights
U.S. government efforts to protect and enforce intellectual property rights are crucial to preventing billions of dollars in economic losses and for mitigating health and safety risks from trade in counterfeit and pirated goods. The Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection (CBP) leads intellectual property (IP) enforcement activity at the U.S. border. GAO was asked to (1) examine key aspects of CBP's process to carry out border enforcement, (2) analyze CBP's border enforcement outcomes during fiscal years 2001 to 2006, and (3) evaluate CBP's approach for improving border enforcement. GAO examined relevant documents, interviewed agency officials in Washington, D.C. and seven port locations, and analyzed CBP data on trade and IP seizure and penalty activity. This is the public version of a law enforcement sensitive report by the same title (GAO-07-350SU).
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| United States Customs and Border Protection | To develop a more effective approach to IP border enforcement, the CBP Commissioner should direct the Offices of International Trade and Field Operations to work together to clarify agencywide goals related to IP enforcement activity by working with the Office of Management and Budget to include in its agency's strategic plan measures to guide and assess IP enforcement outcomes. | In this report, we found that while CBP's intellectual property (IP) enforcement activities had been growing, the agency's enforcement efforts were not well integrated across key CBP offices and enforcement outcomes were uneven across CBP ports. Although CBP's strategic plan highlighted the importance of IP enforcement, the plan lacked performance measures to guide agency-wide efforts and measure outcomes. The only articulation of CBP's IP enforcement strategy at the time was an internal planning document with limited distribution throughout the agency that we said was not an effective means of holding CBP accountable to Congress for its performance on IP enforcement. For this reason, we... recommended that CBP clarify agency-wide goals by including measures to guide and assess IP enforcement outcomes in its strategic plan, the highest level planning document at that time. In commenting on the report, CBP said it partly concurred with this recommendation and would identify or create appropriate measures for potential inclusion in its strategic plan. GAO continued to report to Congress on IP enforcement (GAO-07-74 and GAO-07-529) and worked closely with key Congressional staff as they developed legislation that resulted in the October 2008 Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act (PRO-IP Act), which required important changes in the federal structure and planning for IP enforcement. In October 2008, CBP for the first time published a Trade Strategy for fiscal years 2009-2013 and cited GAO-07-735 as one of several program evaluations that influenced the plan. The strategy mentioned IP enforcement but did not contain related enforcement objectives or performance measures. In the October 2009 legislation on DHS 2010 appropriations, and consistent with our concerns in 2007, Congress expressed its sense that CBP needed to increase its focus on the enforcement of IP rights. In July 2010, CBP submitted to Congress a 5-year Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Strategy that seeks to create a more effective IP enforcement approach by articulating enforcement goals and objectives at the pre-entry, entry, and post-entry import phases. For example, entry-based goals include improving the efficiency of models used to target shipments for potential IP infringement, improving the tools and processes used to determine IP infringement, and expanding training for all enforcement personnel. CBP's strategy is linked to the federal government's first Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement, which was required by the PRO-IP Act and published in June 2010. The joint plan established five performance indicators for IP protection and enforcement (three of which involve reporting from the Department of Homeland Security). The plan reported that these key performance indicators represent an initial list that is subject to modification based on the U.S. government's experience collecting and analyzing indicators. These two documents, CBP's 5-year Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Strategy and the federal Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement, meet the intent of our recommendation, which was to send a broad signal across CBP of the importance of its IP enforcement activities.
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| United States Customs and Border Protection | To develop a more effective approach to IP border enforcement, the CBP Commissioner should direct the Offices of International Trade and Field Operations to work together to improve data on IP enforcement activity by determining the completeness and reliability of existing IP enforcement data and identifying aspects of the data that need to be improved and ensuring uniformity in port practices to overcome any weaknesses in data reporting. | In 2007, GAO reported in Intellectual Property: Better Data Analysis and Integration Could Help U.S. Customs and Border Protection Improve Border Enforcement Efforts (GAO-07-735) that poor data quality and uneven data recording practices among U.S. ports had made it difficult for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to accurately analyze the results of its intellectual property (IP) enforcement efforts. We recommended that the CBP Commissioner direct the Office of International Trade and the Office of Field Operations to work together to improve IP enforcement data by (1) determining the completeness and reliability of existing IP enforcement data and identifying aspects of the data that...
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| United States Customs and Border Protection | To develop a more effective approach to IP border enforcement, the CBP Commissioner should direct the Offices of International Trade and Field Operations to work together to use existing data to understand and improve IP border enforcement activity by analyzing IP enforcement outcomes across ports and other useful categories, such as modes of transportation and reporting the results of this analysis internally to provide performance feedback to the ports, better link port performance to performance measures in CBP's strategic plan, and inform resource allocation decisions. | In 2007, GAO's report, Intellectual Property: Better Data Analysis and Integration Could Help U.S. Customs and Border Protection Improve Border Enforcement Efforts (GAO-07-735) found that seizures by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) of goods that violate U.S. intellectual property (IP) laws were highly concentrated among just a few of CBP's 300-plus ports of entry. We found that CBP had not undertaken any systematic analysis of its IP seizures to understand variations in enforcement outcomes within or across ports or to learn from ports that have been relatively more successful in capturing fraudulent IP goods. Our findings were based on a simple but powerful analysis by port of...
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Agency evaluationBorder securityHomeland securityImport restrictionIntellectual propertyInternational tradeInternational trade regulationLaw enforcementPerformance measuresProgram evaluationSearch and seizureStrategic planning