Excellence in Creativity: Q&A with IP Champion 2024 Ruth Vitale

Each year, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce celebrates leaders who rely on IP protection to advance cultural, scientific, and technological solutions to the world’s leading challenges. The Chamber's Global IP Champions event recognizes those who constantly demonstrate leadership, ingenuity, and creativity in pursuing strong intellectual property rights and brings together the visionaries in innovation and creativity who create jobs, underpin economic growth, and enhance our shared competitiveness.

In the lead up to this year's event, the Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) is spotlighting awardees in a series of conversations about the impact of IP protection on their organizations, the intellectual property landscape, and their predictions for the future.

For this installment, I sat down with Ruth Vitale, CEO of CreativeFuture, a nonprofit advocacy organization for the creative industries, who shares her thoughts on copyright legislation, global digital piracy and the future of the creative communities.

How does intellectual property impact your organization day to day?

We are a Los Angeles-based nonprofit and we come from decades in the film business. We advocate for our colleagues in the creative community to protect their livelihoods. Intellectual property impacts our organization every day as we advocate for the importance of strong copyright legislation to protect creativity, including raising awareness of the massive harm caused by global digital piracy. 

Can you share a specific project or initiative that you believe has made a significant impact on intellectual property?

Four to five times a year, CreativeFuture brings members of the creative community to D.C. to advocate for these strong IP protections. These trips put faces to the names of the countless individuals who work tirelessly to bring us the entertainment we all love. These interactions between creatives and policymakers help educate our community’s and policymakers’ understanding of the economic and cultural importance of the creative industries.

What role do you believe collaboration plays in advancing intellectual property initiatives, and can you share an example of a successful partnership you’ve been involved in?

It is imperative that intellectual property advocacy organizations work together. CreativeFuture makes a point of working with all our D.C. colleagues to protect the livelihoods of the members of our creative community. For instance, we worked with Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) – a cross-industry accountability program –to encourage legitimate advertisers to keep their ads off pirate sites. As a direct result of this collaboration, brand advertisements no longer appear in the U.S. on pirate sites at volume, representing a 90% decrease in just over two years.

In your opinion, what are the biggest and most urgent challenges facing the intellectual property landscape today, and how can champions like you tackle these challenges?

I have been doing this job for 11 years, during which piracy has only worsened. Again, I cannot stress enough that we must work together to implement preventative measures, whether voluntary initiatives or legislative solutions. But the current, unfettered state of piracy is an existential threat to the survival of our creative community.

How do you see intellectual property policy and enforcement evolving over the next few years?

With technology evolving so quickly, predicting what the next few years will bring is difficult. However, it is vital that we keep pace with our democratic allies with legislation that addresses global piracy. Numerous other Western democracies have given us examples of how to begin to effectively protect intellectual property and advocate for creativity – examples that we have not yet adopted here in the U.S. Our community has a long tradition of working with our international partners to ensure that the United States remains a global leader in the protection of intellectual property. We should continue that tradition and modernize our copyright laws to protect our creative communities in the digital age.

About the authors

Brad Watts

Brad Watts is the Vice President for Patents and Innovation Policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC). He works with U.S. Chamber members to foster a political, legal, and economic environment where innovators and creators can invest in the next big thing for the benefit of Americans and the world.

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