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N. 31, January - February 2007
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 | Editorial
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Enforcement of intellectual property rights
Mr Lászlo Kovács
EU Commissioner for Taxation and Customs Union
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Counterfeiting and piracy are reaching both new heights, in terms of
the range and numbers of products being copied, and new depths, with criminals`
willingness to copy anything regardless of the risk to human life.
Figures collected by Customs at EU borders show the range and scale
of the problem. Dangerous goods seized in 2005 included more than five million
fake foodstuffs, including alcoholic drinks containing health threatening
chemicals, and pharmaceuticals, which are either dangerous to the health or
which provide no protection because they lack an active ingredient. To this can
be added the side effects of the counterfeit industry, the link to illicit
drugs and organised crime, the exploitation of child labour in producing
regions and the damage to the investment and competitiveness of European
businesses, which in turn costs taxes and jobs.
Tackling this growing menace requires a strong response by
enforcement authorities, by right holders and business in general, as well as
by the public.
Customs is the main enforcement agency for the prevention of
international trade in fakes, and in the Community we have been pro-active in
tackling what is an increasingly sophisticated and ruthless business operating
on an industrial scale. We have renewed the Community Customs
legislation1 in this area to make
it easier and cheaper for right holders to request customs intervention. The
Commission has also set out an Action Plan2 detailing concrete customs actions that are now being
implemented to tackle the industrialised production of fakes.
In addition to actions in Europe, such as the creation of a task
force of customs officials to improve operational performance and targeting, we
have been looking at how we can improve co-operation at the international
level. We are strengthening our operational contacts with the U.S. through a
series of concrete customs initiatives and through increased information
exchange under our Customs Co-operation Agreement. We are also strengthening
our operational co-operation with China under the Customs Cooperation Agreement
which entered into force in April 2005. My visit to China toward the end of
2005 and subsequent high level contacts with my Chinese counterparts indicate
that together we can do a lot to meet the threat we jointly face. It is clear
that China is a major producing region, but it should not be forgotten that
China, and developing regions such as Africa, often suffer greatly from fake
medicines, children’s food and similar products.
Finally we have been looking to see how we can work better with
right holders, and in particular SMEs, that are increasingly threatened by
fakes. Current legislation provides the means for right holders to alert
customs in 27 Member States of the main risks they encounter when criminals
infringe their intellectual property rights. We know, nevertheless, that it is
difficult for businesses, and particularly SMEs to rapidly ensure that
information gets to the appropriate control point when high-risk consignments
are discovered. However, starting in 2007, IT tools are currently being into
place to enable business intelligence to be rapidly transmitted to customs risk
management centres around the Community to enable interventions to be made at
any point of the Community’s external frontier.
However with the continued growth in counterfeiting and new
developments, such as increasing internet sales, leading to more but smaller
transactions, placing an increasing strain on limited enforcement resources, we
need to continuously update our approaches.
Keeping up with the counterfeit industry is difficult enough, but to
protect the health and jobs of citizens we need to do more. We have to improve
enforcement efforts and increase penalties to prevent counterfeiting from being
regarded as a low-risk, high-profit business and hence a soft option for
criminals. We also need to make full use of the joint public and private
partnership interests. This concerns not only right holders and other economic
operators but also the public at large. We must get across the message that
buying cut price fakes is not a bit of holiday fun but a deadly business where
profits are made from human suffering and jobs and the ability of businesses to
compete fairly in the global market with criminals are undermined.
I believe that close co-operation between regulators, the business
sector, the public and enforcement agencies will enable us to tackle this
problem by reducing potential profits and considerably increasing both the risk
of detection and the penalties imposed.
1.
Council Regulation (EC) No. 1383/2003 and Commission Regulation
(EC) No. 1891/2004(«)
2.
COM(2005) 479 of 11th October 2005(«)
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