The anti-piracy bill – the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2007 – now moves to the floor for a vote in the House.

John Conyers Jr, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, introduced the bill in December last year along with 17 other co-sponsors.

The Act, also known as the PRO IP Act, will see the establishment of a new office headed by an IP enforcement representative. It would also create a permanent IP division within the Department of Justice (DOJ), which would take over the IP-related duties of the department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property section, introduce new resources to improve IP law enforcement and require the DOJ to prepare an annual report detailing its IP enforcement activities.

Executive director Patrick Ross of the Copyright Alliance, one of the groups in favour of the legislation, applauded the Committee for “advancing this important piece of legislation”.

“Given the high stakes involved, we expect expedient action by the full House of Representatives,” he said.

The bill was amended by a subcommittee to remove a provision that would have awarded copyright owners multiple statutory damages in cases where an individual was found to have made copies of copyrighted material.

A spokesperson for Public Knowledge, which lobbied for the amendment, said that the organization was pleased that the bill was revised to clarify that there has to be a “substantial connection” between property to be seized, such as a computer, a car or a house, and any violations of the copyright law.

A number of academics had criticized the original proposal, which would, for example, have allowed the recording industry to collect damages for each track that was copied from a CD. William Patry, senior copyright counsel at Google, had described the proposed legislation as the “most outrageously gluttonous IP bill ever introduced in the US”.