Firms back counterfeit clamp-down

Date: 25/02/1999

By Peter Chapman

Internal Market Commissioner Mario Monti's plans to clamp down on the counterfeiting of EU products are set to win the backing of branded goods firms at a key conference next week.

Industry support for the initiative will come as Monti's officials complete their consultations on last October's Green Paper on counterfeiting during the two-day-long conference at the Munich-based European Patent Office which begins next Tuesday (2 March).

Industry and government experts will debate Monti's paper, which suggested possible action in four key areas to halt the estimated 100,000 annual EU job losses caused by counterfeiting in sectors ranging from computing and toys to perfumes and compact discs.

These include efforts to boost market surveillance by industry groups and provide greater legal protection for security and anti-counterfeiting devices used by manufacturers to ensure the integrity of their products.

The Commissioner said last autumn that he wanted to ensure that penalty regimes across the EU were working in unison to stop pirates from switching their activities to countries which took the most lax approach to the issue. He also floated the possibility of a concerted effort to increase cooperation between member states in the fight against piracy.

Monti said the highest counterfeiting rates were in the software sector, where 35% of revenues come from faked programs, many of them expensive office packages such as sophisticated desktop publishing suites which retail for hundreds of euro each.

Philip Sheppard, of the European Brands Association, said he was "broadly supportive" of the tone of Monti's Green Paper. "Minimum penalties at Community level are a good idea. Penalties need to be higher," he said, adding that criminals were increasingly moving from 'high-reward, high-penalty' activities such as drug smuggling and towards 'high-reward, low-penalty' offences such as counterfeiting.

Sheppard has, however, warned the Commission against proposing bureaucratic measures to centralise cooperation between member states. "We say, let's stick with what we have rather than introduce something too cumbersome," he explained.

Sheppard also argued against tough new rules to standardise approaches to technical devices used to thwart the counterfeiters. "The Commission asked if it would help if we had general rules. We said no because these things have to move so fast," he said.