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Friday July 22, 2011 |
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The Mexican Senate has voted
against ratifying the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The vote
comes on the heels of a European
report that cautions against implementing ACTA without changes to
EU law and guidelines for EU member state implementation.
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Wednesday June 29, 2011 |
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While critics frequently claim that Canada has weak intellectual
property laws, yet another case demonstrates that penalties can be
severe. A federal court in Vancouver has awarded
$2.5 million in damages arising from the fake Louis Vuitton and
Burberry handbags.
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Friday June 10, 2011 |
Earlier this week, I posted
on how the Canadian IP Council, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce's IP
lobby arm, floated false claims about the scope of counterfeiting in
Canada in an attempt to bolster claims for increased border measures.
That was followed by a post yesterday
on Professor Edward Iacobucci's debunking
of the Chamber's report on Canadian patent law, which he found to be
deeply flawed. In response to my first post, the IP Council's Chris
Gray tweeted responses that the Chamber does
not want individual travellers searched and that its claim
of $30 billion in losses from counterfeiting in Canada comes from a
recent International
Chamber of Commerce report.
The retraction on border searches of travellers is good news, though
the Chamber should seek to publicly correct the Globe and Mail, which reported
otherwise. Moreover, given that some of its members have publicly
stated their opposition to the de minimis provision in the
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement - GlaxoSmithKline has said
the exclusion of traveller's luggage "sends out an entirely
inappropriate message" - its position on the issue may not be cast in
stone.
Even more notable is the suggestion that the Canadian Chamber of
Commerce is now basing its $30 billion counterfeiting claim on the 2011
International Chamber of Commerce report.
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Wednesday June 08, 2011 |
This week the Canadian IP Council, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce's
IP lobby arm, issued a release
placing Canadian counterfeiting costs at $30 billion per year. That
figure is being used to lobby the government to enact new border
measure provisions that could lead to the searching of luggage as
travellers enter Canada. It is tempting to dismiss the claims on the
basis that the policy rationale makes no sense - if counterfeit
toothpaste is indeed "coming across the border in droves" as the Chamber
claims, searching traveller luggage won't address that issue.
Moreover, it should be noted that even the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade
Agreement features an exception
for de minimis imports that an individual might carry as it recognizes
that addressing counterfeiting concerns does not involve targeting
individuals. Yet given the decision to resurrect the bogus $30 billion
figure, it is important to again call attention to its origins and how
it is simply a fabrication.
[Update: New
post with the Chamber's response and more fake figures]
Several years ago I examined the
source of the $30 billion claim, which has been repeated on many
occasions over the years. The review started with an Access to
Information request with the RCMP for the source of the $30 billion
claim, which was found in a 2005 report. The RCMP responded that the
figure was based on "open source documents found on the Internet." What
were these documents? The RCMP provided two:
First, a March 2005 CTV news story reported unsubstantiated claims by the
International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition, a global
anti-counterfeiting lobby group made up predominantly of brand owners
and law firms, that some of its members believe that 20 percent of the
Canadian market is "pirate product." That 20 percent figure -
raised without the support of any evidence whatsoever - appears to have
been used by IACC to peg the cost of counterfeiting in Canada at $20
billion per year.
Second, a 2005 powerpoint presentation by Jayson Myers, then the Chief Economist
for the Canadian Manufacturing and Exporters, included a single bullet
point that "estimated direct losses in Canada between $20 billion and
$30 billion annually." The source for this claim? According to
Mr. Myers, it is simply 3 to 4 percent of the value of Canada's two-way
trade.
In recent years, the RCMP has backed away from the $30 billion claim.
In its August
2010 report on IP crime, it declined to set a figure, acknowledging
that the numbers "have been subject to debate in recent years."
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