The U.S. Chamber's Global Innovation Policy Center convened policymakers, industry leaders, and international officials on April 21st for the Global IP Summit. This year’s event focused on how trade, technology, and sports sit at the center of today’s most dynamic IP debates.
As Francisco Carrillo, Senior Director, Federal Government Relations for Pfizer, explained, “Intellectual property doesn't protect itself. It takes sustained engagement between government, industry, and civil society to build and defend the frameworks that incentivize innovation, attract investment, and create jobs.”
What they said:
“Every piece of eligible [IP] is a potential job. It's a new business. It's a competitive advantage,” said John Squires, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Companies giving the administration helpful feedback about IP environments around the world is “extremely helpful,” said Daniel Lee, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Innovation and Intellectual Property. “Having real world examples about how this is impacting businesses or impacting decisions that businesses are taking is really critical to convincing [foreign governments] to actually take steps to fix these problems.”
“[Sports IP] opens the door to commercial partnerships. It opens the door to a lot of data that we can use to engage customers and improve the experience,” said Nicholas Huskins, Senior Corporate Counsel for Amazon Studios and Prime Video.
Intellectual property is built into the sports we love, said Daren Tang, Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization: “That aerodynamic swimsuit that caused the revolution in competitive swimming? Patented. The club [logo] pressed on a football shirt that fans in many countries wear? Trademark protected and licensed. The broadcast that brings the stadium into 800 million living rooms? Copyrighted.”
“A lot of the focus [of the U.S. Copyright Office] is, first of all, ensuring that human creativity can continue to thrive and have value, and second, to make sure that copyrights are meaningful because they're able to be enforced,” said Shira Perlmutter, Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S. Copyright Office.
Big picture: The U.S. Chamber's 2026 International IP Index found that some of the world's most advanced economies are seeing their IP frameworks weaken. For American inventors, creators, and brands, that means less protection abroad. And for the millions of U.S. workers in IP-intensive industries, it puts their livelihoods directly at risk.
Go deeper: Follow the U.S. Chamber's Global Innovation Policy Center's work on protecting and strengthening IP frameworks worldwide here.
