A Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List Released by the European Commission

At the end of 2018, the European Commission released a watch list mainly aiming at counterfeit and piracy products from the non-EU countries.

At the end of 2018, a counterfeit and piracy watch list was published by the European Commission which aimed at the sources of those from the non-EU countries. The list was cooperated by the support of relative departments including the EUIPO, Europol and EU members which aimed at urging local governments to take necessary actions, encouraging stakeholders to employ effective measures and helping customers raise attentions to avoid purchasing counterfeit and piracy products.

From the results concluded on the watch list, the main participants are enterprises, representative organizations of stakeholders and specialized agencies working at IPRs protection, while individuals, law firms, chambers of commerce and over 20 relative countries are also included. It’s worth noticing that according to the feedbacks from brand/trademark holders (mainly about sportswear, automobiles, luxury products, fashion products, shoes, electronics and cosmetics) and chambers of commerce, the e-commerce platforms which are severely afflicted areas for counterfeit products are mainly located in China or southeast Asia, besides many counterfeit products are being sold via social media. As for the real market, rights infringements mostly take place in China, India and other southeast Asian countries. Here comes a very special situation that a number of infringers take advantage of the FTA to produce, store and transport those counterfeit products to other areas or countries including the EU, concealing the real producing or delivery address.

The list also summarized a number of counterfeit and piracy actions on the e-commerce platforms. The reference factors which are considered before taking the platforms into the list by the European commission are as follows:

1. Expected number of provided infringing products;

2. Low-effective detecting or removing measures on infringing goods or unqualified cooperation with stakeholders or executing institutions;

3. Vague terms of service (especially on the terms considering preventing users from selling or trading infringing products or service);

4. Lack of effective censorship mechanisms on platform sellers;

5. Unused automatic risk management software to classify or warn of high-risky behaviors.

Based on the criteria above, seven enterprises or websites are added to the watch list in all, including those from Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, India and China. It’s worth mentioning that although during the public consultation stage a lot of large-scale e-commerce platforms, including Tmall.com, Taobao.com, Amazon.com, were reported to contain a lot of suspected infringing products, they were finally free from the watch list because of their well-done actions in obeying or executing relative IP regulations, cooperating with the stakeholders on rights protection, detecting and removing infringing products in time. However, the European commission also alerted those platforms to expect them to make more efforts to clear or effectively reduce infringing products at least.

The physical markets mentioned located in China by the watch list include Shenzhen Huaqiang North Electronics Market and Chengdu Qinglong Shoes Terminal Market which reveals that there’s a huge advancing room for China to strike IPRs infringement.

In the following day, the European commission will keep updating the contents of the list and continue cooperating with the EU’s economic partners under the IPRs protection structure. It will also improve the unilateral or multilateral information exchange on the legislation and law enforcement about the IP rights. Meanwhile, the watch list will also be brought into the frameworks of technology cooperation programs between the EU and China, southeast Asia or Latin America.

Source: China IP Magazine

Time: April 23, 2019

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