Brussels, 20/01/2003 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission recently adopted a proposal of regulation intended to improve the fight against counterfeit goods imported into the EU. The proposal, which is to reform the regulation in force, recommends simplification of the conditions allowing Member State customs authorities to seize goods at the request of intellectual property right holders, and the extension of the list of products covered by Community legislation. The text should be followed in coming weeks by a proposal of directive aimed at harmonising sanctions applied by Member States for the case of counterfeit goods produced in the European Union.
In recent years, "counterfeiting has become a large-scale industrial phenomenon calling, in the case of counterfeit pharmaceutical goods for example, for considerable industrial and commercial investment", the Director General for Customs at the Commission, Robert Verrue, states. In 2001, nearly 100 million articles were intercepted, for an estimated value on the legal Union market of around EUR 2 billion, a Commission press release says. The Commission report on piracy and counterfeiting, presented last July, noted a 900% rise in the number of objects seized by customs between 1998 and 2001.
The aim of the new Commission proposal is to rapidly strengthen the Community instrument for combating this phenomenon, so that it may be applied after enlargement by the countries ensuring control of the new EU borders, such as Poland, Robert Verrue noted.
In practice, the proposal of regulation provides for the scope of the regulation to be extended to new intellectual property rights: - new plant variety rights, geographic indications and names of origin. Cases of counterfeiting in plant bulbs and cuttings, often from Latin America, India or Pakistan, are on the increase, one Commission expert notes. For example, he said, "50% of all roses are said to be counterfeit".
The new regulation should also simplify the opening of customs procedures at the request of intellectual property right holders. It would do away with the guarantees and loyalties that such holders currently have to set out in order to offset the storage costs of products, and ensure compensation for damage or injury to importers, once a complaint for fraud has been proven without grounds.
Fees and securities would be abolished, says the Commission, to allow SMI/SMEs cost-free access to the regulation; right holders would provide an undertaking in place of a security. The regulation harmonises the period of validity and the form of applications for action for right holders. The proposal would extend the scope of the "ex officio" (own-initiative) procedure to allow customs to act without a prior application for action.
In parallel, right holders will have to provide more detailed information to customs when applying for action, and their request may be suspended or not renewed in the event of abuse or if the information provided by the customs authorities are used for ends other than combatting counterfeiting.
The draft regulation would no longer exclude from its scope counterfeit or pirated goods in a traveller's personal baggage within the limits of the duty-free allowance where such goods are suspected to be part of a "larger-scale traffic", notes the Commission's press release. The proposed regulation can be found on the Commission's website at http: //europa.eu.int/comm/taxation_customs/customs/ counterfeit_piracy/files/propprv_en.pdf