The Regulation of Intellectual Capital in the United States.

Although the United States makes a great deal of the importance of its constitutionally recognized right to privacy, when it comes to regulating the use of certain forms of intellectual capital, privacy rights seem to take a back seat to commerce. Unlike the European Union (EU), the United States (US) has no central law or policy that governs commercial use of personal information. Its fragmented approach to information privacy issues requires commercial enterprises to be familiar with laws and regulations enforced by the Federal Trade Commission, numerous federal statutes and the laws of fifty different states. The problems this decentralized approach poses for those seeking to do businesses in the United States can be daunting. Without a recognized property right in personal information and no central piece of legislation, businesses must search for specific laws dealing with their industry. For example, there are laws governing the use of personal information contained in medical and health records, laws dealing with the use of personal information held in financial service databases and laws specifying how database security breaches are to be dealt with. This paper contrasts and compares the data privacy approach of the EU and the US. Section 2 of the paper begins with how the US approach emphasizes the commercial value and use of information while the EU emphasizes the privacy rights of individuals to information about them. Section 3 of the paper discusses the Federal Trade Commission's Safe Harbor provision, which attempts to satisfy EU Directive privacy requirements, while Section 4 summarizes some of the most significant US data privacy statutes. Section 5 defines the role of state statutes while Section 6 summarizes the consequences of the US approach to data privacy. The paper concludes with a proposal to modify American jurisprudence in a way that would reconcile the US approach to data privacy with that of the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Proceedings of the European Conference on Intellectual Capital is the property of Academic Conferences International and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)