Articles under "#IPR" category

Operation STOP II: Key trends

In 2020, the WCO Secretariat ran the first ever Operation STOP initiative to assist Customs enforcement services in enhancing their capacity to control the medical products which are generally used to diagnose or treat COVID-19. An

Results

A new tool for IP rights holders

A Rights Holders’ Corner has been added to the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) CENcomm Group, the secure communication tool developed by the WCO Secretariat to enable law enforcement officers to exchange information on goods infringing IPR or posing a danger to people’s health and safety.<...

Operation SEASCAPE 2: results and review

Articles suspected of infringing intellectual property rights were split among 16 categories. Of the total number of articles, 52% fell into a category called “other”, which mainly includes face masks, hand tools and ball bearings. The other categories of articles with the highest volumes ar...

Hong Kong Customs: equipped to tackle cybercrime

The rapid development of the Internet in the past decade has drastically and positively changed every aspect of our lives. People, in almost all cities across the world, are today virtually connected with each 24/7. But thanks to its speed, expediency and anonymity, internet-based technology has ...

Highlights on the trade in non-authorized and counterfeit pesticides

The global trade in illegal pesticides is growing, evidenced by the increase in the number of seizures and incidents around the world related to such products. The increase is not only due to better awareness by controlling authorities of the phenomenon, but also to the fact that nowadays the ill...

IPR protection: an overview of Argentine Customs’ enforcement strategy

For some years now, Argentine Customs has been treating counterfeiting and piracy as a serious threat to its economy and to the health and security of people. In 2011, the WCO recognized these efforts by awarding Argentine Customs a special prize for demonstrating its outstanding commitment to co...

Moreover, Customs has the competency to act on its own initiative^[1] (ex officio procedure). In such cases, the right holder is notified of the detention of the goods, providing him with the opportunity to submit an AFA. However, Customs can also de...

The Trademark Fraud Division was established in 2006 as a specialized unit to work on enhancing Customs’ capacity to detect IPR infringing goods and to manage the Alert Entry System. Currently, th...

Customs laboratories in the United States: at the frontline of fighting fraud

In late December 2010, the news broke about a Seattle court case involving counterfeit honey. A 70-year old Bellevue, Washington man, Chung Po Liu, had been sentenced to a year and a day in prison and was ordered to pay 400,000 US dollars (USD) in restitution for importing falsely declared Chines...

Then the Chinese exporters changed their strategy. This time the shipments were sent from China, but they weren’t declared as honey. The shipping documents labelled the cargo as sugar syrup. “They ...

Storage and destruction of counterfeit goods: the safety and environmental challenges

Interview with Ms Louise van Greunen, Director, Building Respect for IP Division, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and Dr Martin Guard, Chartered Environmentalist and Hazardous Waste Specialist

What must be taken into account before storing IP-infringing goods, and who is liable for storage costs?

Dr Martin Guard: Storage of IP-infringing goods can be both complex and expensive. Firstly, IP-in...

Armenia Customs strengthen anti-counterfeiting enforcement thanks to high-performance analytical tools

The implementation of a risk management tool to manage ...

The tool built is flexible and undergoes continuous development and expansion. Like other automated systems, it collects, organizes and categorizes data from various IT systems on t...

At the Georgian Cyber Security and IT Innovation Conference held in 2019, the IPR module developed by the State Revenue Committee of the Republic of Armenia won the prize for “Best Online Information Resource”. During the event, the State Revenue Committee was also awarded “The Best IT Mana...

Disposing of counterfeit goods through recycling: Dubai Customs’ new measure is a game-changer

The need to dispose of or destroy goods that infringe intellectual property (IP) rights in an appropriate, environmentally safe manner, in line with the applicable environmental and public health legislation, has been highlighted at various WCO meetings as well as in this

In 2021, Dubai Customs made around 390 seizures totalling 1,764,710 counterfeit items – a big jump from the 1,906 counterfeit items seized in 2020. The fake products ranged from computers to athletic shoes, timepieces, mobile phone accessories, headphones, garments, bags and cosmetics. All of t...

An enriching and remarkable journey on the “SMIPRP train” in Japan

High rise buildings with beautiful lighting, fascinating road layouts and curves cutting deftly and sometimes complicatedly across each other, signalled my arrival in Japan. Almost every wall and sign post from the airport to the city was dotted with an intriguing mix of Katakana, Hiragana and Ka...

Internet domain name ownership data: understanding changes and useful suggestions for Customs

Computers identify websites with an IP address, a long string of numbers separated by periods, which are difficult for humans to remember. Websites also have an address, made up of alphanumeric letters that usually spell out a word or brand name, called a domain name.

Since the creation of...

However, the availability of this data to law enforcement authorities and other good actors has been significantly reduced as a result of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which went into effect in May 2018. Overreaction...

Respect for IP – Growing from the Tip of Africa

Many experiences were shared during the International Conference “Respect for IP – Growing from the Tip of Africa,” which took place at the end of October 2018 in Sandton, South Africa. The conference was co-organized by South Africa’s Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC)...

Opening the conference, Joan Fubbs, the South African Parliament’s Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry, summarized what was at stake: “Lately, there is a widening co...