If that happens, it would mean that Customs officials could ask the postal services to open items of mail suspected of containing fakes, and that postal officials would be legally bound to do so.
Bilal Khan, a Customs and airmail specialist at the International Bureau of the Universal Postal Union (UPU), told the Fourth Global Congress on Combating Counterfeiting and Piracy held in Dubai last week that the UPU would invite a representative of the World Customs Organization to its Congress later this year to explain how the postal services could help tackle the international trade in counterfeits.
The UPU Congress will then vote on whether to add fakes to the list of articles that it refuses to mail. At the moment, the list includes items such as explosives, live animals, clinical waste and counterfeit currency.
But Khan told last week's Congress of Customs officials and IP professionals that he had doubts about the merits of requiring post office workers to play a bigger role in stopping the trade in fakes.
"UPU members, as carriers, are not in a position to determine how and where counterfeits can be controlled," he said. "They don't have the expertise to identify fakes. We have three areas of expertise: we collect, transport and deliver the mail."
He went on to say that adding counterfeits to the list of prohibited articles could present practical problems for the postal service.
"Most post is sent from consumer to consumer. If it is opened, who is responsible for the delay? Which country would be responsible for destroying the fakes? What would happen if there was a conflict between national and international law?" he asked.
But he told the audience in Dubai that the UPU was working to create a consensus within the postal organization to get the proposal accepted during 2008.
Khan was speaking during a session focusing on the sale of fakes and pirated products over the internet. Earlier in the session, Christophe Zimmerman of the World Customs Organization (WCO) told the audience that the internet and the postal dilemma was creating what he called a "mission impossible" for Customs.
He said that two articles in the TRIPs Agreement limit the power that Customs officials have to identify fakes sent by post. First, Article 60 says that WTO members may exclude "small quantities of goods of a non-commercial nature contained in travellers' personal luggage or sent in small consignments" from the rules covering the import of fake goods.
Secondly, Article 51 says that there is no obligation on WTO member states to control goods for export.
"The consequences are that there are millions of postal consignments every day and no possibility for us to apply risk analysis techniques," Zimmerman said.
