A Prescription for Anti-Counterfeiting

The Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network (CACN) recently released a report detailing counterfeiting and piracy in Canada. The report also provides some recommendations for the government to address these issues. Some of the recommendations include increasing and improving the coordination of government resources dedicated to IP enforcement and education, creating an IP border enforcement regime and enacting or amending legislation to address shortfalls in existing legislation (such as providing criminal sanctions in the Trade-marks Act).

This report is timely considering Warner Bros. Pictures Canada recent announcement (story here) that it is cancelling sneak preview screenings in Canada due to piracy in movie theatres. Apparently, the federal government plans to introduce movie piracy legislation in response to lobbying from Hollywood.

As well as infringing on the rights of IP owners, piracy and counterfeiting are costly to the Canadian economy and counterfeit goods can endanger consumers (e.g. counterfeit pharmaceuticals and car parts). Canada has often been placed on the United States Trade Representative’s Special 301 Watch List - an “honour” that I’m sure we would like to see not bestowed in the future. It will be interesting to monitor the government’s reaction to the CACN report and recommendations.

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This entry was posted by Karen Monteith on Friday, May 11th, 2007 at 10:36 am and is filed under Legislation, Protection & Enforcement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “A Prescription for Anti-Counterfeiting”

  1. Canadian Trademark Blog » Knock Off the Counterfeiting on June 26th, 2007 3:44 pm

    [...] According to a recent Vancouver Sun front-page headline, Vancouver is the knockoff capital of Canada.  The article states that the police are about to put forward a test case that they hope will lead to successful prosecution of cases involving trademark infringement.  In an earlier post, we discussed some of the recommendations that the Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network provided to the government to address counterfeiting and piracy in Canada.  [...]