Mumbai : The second International Conference of Confederation of India Industry (CII) was organized in collaboration with Quality Brand Protection Committee (QBPC), China last week. The conference, which was sponsored by Microsoft India and TACT India, was aimed at making the participants understand the challenges raised by product counterfeiting and piracy.

In his welcome address TU Shenava, MD, Industrial Tubes Manufacturers said, "The conference will serve as a forum to discuss legal guidelines related to the prosecution of IPR infringement and to eliminate loopholes within the existing laws."

The other objective of the conference was to facilitate capability building in IP owners and protect consumer interest and to enhance coordination, cooperation and enhance public private initiatives for Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Protection and enforcement.

The other speakers who were present included David Blakemore, Executive Director, IPR business partnership Asia Pacific, Jack Chang, Senior IP Counsel, Asia, GE, Chairman, Quality Brands Protection Committee, Sanjay Mohite, Deputy Commissioner of Police Preventive / Enforcement, Mumbai and Suboodh Kumar, Head IPR and APTDC, CII.

Mohite in his speech emphasized on technology and its importance in every body's life, which became reason for counterfeiting and piracy. "To control this wave there should be a common body or a taskforce appointed who should look after the enforcement of IPR protection," said Mohite.

Talking about how rampantly available pirated products are available in India Mohite said, "This time piracy is going to hit both industries and government sectors badly. Explaining the legalities he said, "Police have the power to arrest culprits without raising the warrant and file case against the same. But the concern is most of the cases don't get logical end."

Leading the discussion Blakemore said that the world is going under the pressure of economic recession and at this tight situation it's very important to focus on the Protection of IPR. "Till this day the solutions, which are adopted to suspend counterfeit and piracy were not sufficient enough to combat the problem. We should become smart to understand the problem and smart to find out solutions for the same," said Blakemore.

Chang in his keynote insisted that the industries have to work together to ensure that IPR is on the government's agenda, "Agencies alone will not be sufficient to tackle this problem. Companies should share resources with each other in order to restrain piracy," he opined.

In a session Dominic Keating, IPR Attaché, US Embassy, New Delhi emphasized on developing a competitive environment for innovation and benefits of the innovation and creativity. He also said that $64 billion losses happened to the United States in 2007 because of piracy.

"Counterfeiting and the gray market are the biggest challenge for all industries irrespective of pharma, FMGC, software and etc," said Anurag Kashyap, Associate Director of KPMG. He presented key highlights from the four case studies on telecom, software trading, liquor and FMCG.

The last speaker of the session was Keshav S Dhakad, Chair–India Committee, Business Software Alliance (BSA). He explained Russia and China are doing good work to come out form piracy and the losses happened to the countries are in billion dollars. "In India 38 percent of the total computer users are using pirated software. The economic effects will be more in this situation. Both public and private sector will lose revenue," he added.

Raising the issue of cheap imports PS Purthi, Commissioner (Customs), Central Board of Excise & Customs said, "There has been a paradigm shift in the enforcement of IPR laws. We also need to make public the list of culprits to deter others."

AA Khan Chief Advisor of EIPR India presented some reasons for the infringement of IPR laws in India. According to him counterfeiting is the easiest way of making money through counterfeiting other products.

He said, "In India counterfeiting is not an organized crime like China. Ten years back we could able to find the fake products very easily. But now unfortunately the quality and the packing of the fake products improved to a good extent it's difficult to make out the difference. Another reason for the spread of this crime is that the standard of literacy in the rural areas of India and China is very low. The people are not competitive enough to find the difference between fake and the genuine products."

"India has very strict IPR laws but very weak in enforcement. Section 115 part (4) of the Trade Mark Act has to be replaced or amended. Regular training has to be given to the police officers on IPR issues," said Anubhav Jain, Brand Protestation Manager of South Asia Mercedes-Benz India.

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