Knock Off the Counterfeiting

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.

Interestingly, the Lower Mainland’s hugely popular Richmond Night Market, which, according to a recent report, is looking for a new home, has community support. Granted, there are vendors selling legitimate goods at the Richmond Night Market but, by all reports, there are many counterfeit goods sold there as well. As discusssed by Larry Munn in a recent article, some trademark owners are now pursuing landlords, seeking to impose liability on landlords for infringing acts of their tenants.

It will be a positive step if the test case mentioned in the Vancouver Sun article is successful. However, the authorities and trademark owners apparently need to change the public’s view that knockoff goods don’t hurt anyone.  Counterfeit goods harm trademark owners economically and some goods can pose a health hazard to the public. No one wants to brush their teeth with counterfeit toothpaste containing antifreeze.

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This entry was posted by Karen Monteith on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Branding, 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 “Knock Off the Counterfeiting”

  1. Canadian Trademark Blog » Committee Report to Government on Counterfeiting on July 3rd, 2007 9:24 am

    [...] Further to our post last Tuesday, we note that The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology has submitted a report to the House of Commons entitled “Counterfeiting and Piracy Are Theft”.  Apart from the title’s stating the obvious, the Committee’s report  provides 19 recommendations, among which are creating a new criminal offence for manufacturing, reproducing, importing, distributing and selling counterfeit goods and stengthening civil remedies for counterfeiting and piracy infringements. [...]