By Martin Banks - 22nd February 2012
I would call counterfeiting as the mother of unfair competition
Gianluca Scarponi
A two-day seminar on the fight against counterfeiting and piracy in Brussels was told that SMEs do not use registered industrial property rights nearly enough when it comes to combating piracy and counterfeiting.
The event, organised for officials from southern Mediterranean countries by the European commission, heard that 'financial incentives' could be offered to enterprises to help them deal with the growing problem of fake goods.
A scheme, piloted in Italy, was cited as an example of 'best practice' in tackling counterfeiting and also raising public awareness of the problem.
The initiative cited at the conference on Tuesday has been piloted by the Italian Intellectual Property Office.
Gianluca Scarponi, representing the organisation, said, "What happens is that we use the capital generated from applications for patents and designs and, basically, give it back to enterprises for new innovative projects."
He told the Brussels event, "One of the problems is that some companies, especially SMEs, are not completely aware of the necessity to patent a product, invention or design or unable to do it due to the financial crisis."
"What happens is that when these products are illegally copied or counterfeited there is nothing that can be done because they don't have a patent of other IP right."
Under the scheme, enterprises are offered what Scarponi called 'financial incentives' to patent goods, thus undermining the 'ever-growing' counterfeit industry in Europe and beyond. Moreover, there are tools to support the entry of new products in the global market."
He said, "This is a simple yet effective way of spreading the culture of intellectual property rights among enterprises. The overall aim is to increase the number of protected goods on the market.
"Many companies and citizens are still unaware of the overall value of intellectual property rights and do not properly protect themselves.
"This relative lack of awareness allows unfair competitors to enter the market."
He said that in Italy a telephone hotline had also been launched to allow people and businesses to report cases of alleged counterfeiting.
All calls, he said, are passed to the police for possible investigation.
"This is a rapidly growing problem and very costly to the EU economy. I would call counterfeiting as the mother of unfair competition. There needs to be a cultural revolution to tackle it."
Another speaker, Chris Oldknow, vice chairman of the Anti-Counterfeiting Group in the UK, said the conference was a good opportunity to exchange experiences of running public awareness efforts. and seeing what has succeeded and failed both in IP and in other areas of social change."
"It gives us the chance to discuss practical examples of the cooperation between the private and public sector," he said.
The two-day conference was organised by the commission's DG trade in cooperation with TAIEX.
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