I'm very sympathetic to the plight of trademark owners, but the fact is that any time you oppose any additional administrative obligations, there's going to be a cost. Somebody's going to pay for that—absolutely it should be the counterfeiter or the importer. In my reading of the bill, it actually provides for the ability of the IP owner to recover those costs from the counterfeiter. Admittedly, that presumes that they'll be able to succeed eventually in an action, but in the absence of the counterfeiter's paying for this, it's either the taxpayer or the private rights holder. I think the bill strikes a reasonable compromise between those two potential payers of the financial costs in the administrative burden.
