Business, Enforcement, Customs Mobilizing For IP Enforcement
GENEVA -- Global business, law enforcement and customs agencies are mobilizing to fight piracy that’s becoming ever more sophisticated and infiltrating legitimate supply chains, officials said during a counterfeiting and piracy conference here Tues.
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“We are now dealing with the question of how law enforcement should combat counterfeiting and piracy most effectively and no longer the question why,” said Ronald Noble, Interpol secy. gen. He said Interpol IP crime initiatives include improved data collection and exchange, the first global database on IP crime, and global centers for intelligence, data collection, analysis, and operational coordination.
The World Customs Organization (WCO) will unveil major initiatives in June, said Michel Danet, WCO sec. gen., including establishing a standard for customs administrations to help combat counterfeiting and piracy. Sixty or 70 measures will include legislative, regulatory, training and administrative activities, including recommendations for export controls and extending controls to transit operations and transactions, he said: “We're also going to look particularly at” counterfeiting mobile phones, a problem on the rise. “We're going to target initially 60 countries that today have no legislation whatsoever,” on combating counterfeiting and piracy, he said.
Counterfeiting seems to be worsening due to the Internet, the rise of free trade zones and organized crime, said John Dryden, deputy dir.-Science, Technology & Industry at the Organization for Economic Development & Cooperation (OECD). A preliminary OECD report on counterfeiting and piracy, digital piracy and other IPR infringements shows the problem expanding into highly technical goods, Dryden said. Counterfeiting and piracy occur in nearly all economies, including 27 of the 30 OECD countries, and increasingly are infiltrating legitimate supply chain, he said: “The Internet provides new and powerful distribution channels to auction sites, stand alone e-commerce sites and e-mail solicitation,” Dryden said. Movies and software are pirated just about everywhere, Dryden said: “A multinational agreement on IPR enforcement would not be a bad thing.” The report will be published before May.
A relatively comprehensive system on IPR protection via criminal justice has been established in the last 20 years, said Xiong Xuanguo, vp of China’s People’s Supreme Court. In 2005, China dropped the threshold of criminal liability for copyright issues for audio/visual products involved in criminal cases, he said. Punishment for IP crimes will be enhanced, he said.
Industries that rely on copyright or patent protection are responsible for 40% of U.S. exportable products and services, said NBC Universal Chmn. Bob Wright, citing data from a study his firm commissioned. “They are the most important growth drivers in the U.S. economy, contributing nearly 60% of the growth of U.S. exportable products and services,” he said.
A dollar lost to counterfeiting and piracy means $3 of lost GDP, Wright said: The estimated $6 billion studios lose to film piracy means $20 billion lost to U.S. output. IP crime requires a paradigm shift in the “worldwide law enforcement apparatus… for the age of IP theft,” Wright said. Private sector businesses need to join the fight, he said: “Telecom broadband providers need to have effective policies to discourage illegal download activity… We need technology-based authentication processes… but we need cooperation from our partners in the consumer electronics and information technology industries to detect this watermark and disable the playback of pirated content.”