“This is an exciting time to be chair of the ACC,” says Bruce Longbottom of Eli Lilly, who began his two-year term as Chair of INTA’s Anti-Counterfeiting Committee in January this year. He cites the recent publication of a draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, U.S. IP enforcement coordinator Victoria Espinel’s request for comments on a joint strategic enforcement plan and the European Commission’s revision of regulation 1383/2003, which deals with IP enforcement at customs, as three of the most exciting developments taking place this year.

These initiatives will feature prominently in discussions of INTA’s 200-strong Anti-Counterfeiting Committee this Annual Meeting. Although it is hard to produce statistics about counterfeiters because of the difficulty of collecting information, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that counterfeiting and piracy costs the U.S. economy between $200 billion and $250 billion a year annually and is responsible for the loss of 750,000 jobs.

It is the job of the ACC to try and reduce those figures not just in the United States but throughout the world. To do this the committee is split into seven subcommittees that are devoted to specific regions or countries. Each subcommittee organizes its work using what Longbottom describes as “the four pillars” of the ABLE acronym: awareness raising, better cooperation, legislation and enforcement.

Awareness raising and better cooperation

The ACC faces the challenge of raising awareness among the general population and in particular among government officials. Trademark owners, particularly those doing business in developing countries, can be frustrated by the lack on information sharing between Customs, the police and the courts. This lack of communication can make enforcement almost impossible. The Eastern Europe and Central Asia Subcommittee—covering a region that has to deal with the problem of goods in transit—has worked with a lot of government organizations to arrange roundtables with different government departments.

LokeKhoon Tan, a partner of Baker & McKenzie in Hong Kong, and chair of the East Asia and Pacific Subcommittee, told the INTA Daily News that his subcommittee has tentative plans to hold government roundtables in Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Getting these roundtables set up in the region is not easy. “The biggest challenge is that there is always an initial resistance from the government agencies when we engage them for the first time and try to forge better cooperation with them,” says Tan. One way to avoid this, he says, is to make the initial approach through local law firms or investigators that have already established links with them.

Legislation and enforcement

Tan’s Subcommittee is also busy trying to make sure INTA’s voice is heard in the region when countries are in the process of revising their trademark laws. The Committee is now studying revisions that have been proposed to New Zealand’s Trademark Act and is also involved in the long running amendments to China’s Trademark Law.

In the U.S., INTA has been taken part in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) IP rights Subcommittee. In the May 1 issue of the INTA Bulletin, it was announced that USCBP plans to introduce a so-called continuous bond that will make it easier for trademark owners to arrange for the inspection of counterfeit goods. Before this system was introduced, bonds had to be paid each time suspected counterfeit goods had to be inspected.

Strengthening relations with Customs continues to be an important issue for brand owners round the world. In Europe the question of how Customs should deal with goods in transit raised its head last year in the UK case of Nokia Corporation v. Her Majesty’s Commissioners of Revenue & Customs. The Court of Appeal has sought guidance from the European Court of Justice on exactly how Council Regulation No. 1383/2003, which is also under review, should be interpreted. INTA’s Amicus committee has submitted a brief in this case, available at www.inta.org.

Speaking just before the high-profile publication of a draft of ACTA, Longbottom said that the section dealing with online enforcement would be “particularly interesting.” The Committee also works closely with INTA’s Internet Committee on this issue. Longbottom is keen to stress that he is “standing on the shoulders of giants” because of the important work done by his predecessors, including helping to set up the Global Congress on Combatting Counterfeiting and Piracy, which met for the fifth time in Mexico last year and has played a big role in drawing attention to the scale of the counterfeiting problem and building discussion. “The seeds have been planted and are starting to ripen,” he says.

Candice Li, INTA’s External Relations Manager for Anti-Counterfeiting, coordinates with the Anti-Counterfeiting Committee on its various projects in regions around the world as well as the organization’s international initiatives such as the Global Congress on Counterfeiting and Piracy. She stated: “The work of the ACC members and their expertise is invaluable to furthering anticounterfeiting efforts at the national and regional levels. We have been involved in and will continue to conduct a range of activities from monitoring and revising legislation to organizing internal dialogues with government to step up the fight against counterfeiting.”