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U.S. Targets to STOP Counterfeit Goods

October 1, 2004 - page(s): 64

As many companies in the imaging supplies industry are aware, counterfeit and pirated goods are not uncommon. Washington recently moved to crack down on counterfeiting as members of government outlined a new Strategy Targeting Organized Piracy (STOP).

The plan was announced Oct. 4 and includes immediate steps to be taken by U.S. agencies, legal and administrative changes planned for the near future and an intensified U.S. effort to build anti-counterfeiting coalitions with governments and private sectors overseas, officials announced.

"Just as geography no longer limits criminal activity, law enforcement will not be deterred by the boundaries of our nations. We must cooperate with those around the world," Attorney General John Ashcroft said.

Counterfeiting of trademarked and copyrighted merchandise costs international business billions of dollars. According to the Imaging Supplies Coalition, a 1999 survey taken from companies in the imaging supplies industry estimated the impact of counterfeiting to be more than $1 billion annually worldwide for their products.

Although printer consumables were not mentioned specifically - items from automobile and aircraft parts to cigarettes, batteries, shampoo, pharmaceuticals, compact discs and DVDs were named - the wide scope of the administration''s crackdown is designed to have a universal effect.

Under the plan, the United States will publish an annual list of foreign companies known to be producing or trafficking in fakes.

"We''re going to make life more onerous for our target firms, consistent with our international obligations," U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said.

Zoellick said his office would use its annual Special 301 Report, which identifies and ranks foreign countries that fail to provide effective intellectual property rights protection, "to name and shame overseas companies that are producing and trafficking in fakes." The next Special 301 Report is scheduled for April 2005.

At the border, the initiative includes plans to improve the ability of customs officials to keep fake goods from entering the United States.

The U.S. Patent Office, which is part of the Department of Commerce, will open a telephone hotline (1-866-999-HALT) to help businesses register their patents and trademarks around the world and to instruct them on lodging complaints.

Other key elements of the STOP initiative include:

• Helping and empowering American businesses, inventors and innovators, particularly small businesses, to secure and enforce their rights in overseas markets;
• Ensuring consumer safety by securing America''s borders and marketplace from fakes;
• Raising the stakes and making life more onerous for intellectual property thieves through new customs methods that increase costs to violators far beyond seizing shipments and by naming and shaming global pirates and counterfeiters who are producing and trafficking in fakes;
• Developing a "No Trade in Fakes" program in cooperation with the private sector to ensure that global supply chains are free of infringing goods;
• Working to dismantle criminal enterprises that steal intellectual property using all appropriate criminal laws, and overhauling, updating and modernizing U.S. intellectual property statutes; and
• Joining forces with like-minded trading partners concerned about the growing global IPR piracy problem, such as the European Commission, Japan, the United Kingdom and France, which have all recently launched initiatives.

For more information, visit the U.S. Department of Commerce at www.commerce.gov and the Imaging Supplies Coalition at www.isc-inc.org.