IP Summit: React steps up online anti-counterfeiting efforts
Anti-counterfeiting organisation React has this year helped online auction sites and law enforcement officials to close down around 500,000 forums selling counterfeit goods.
Ronald Brohm, director at the European non-profit, revealed the statistics in a session at the IP Summit conference in Alicante. React, which assists law enforcement officials and files civil and criminal complaints, was responsible for the closure of about 450,000 auctions in 2011.
Brohm said React monitors around 70 auction sites in total, including eBay and Chinese sites Taobao and Alibaba.
“More and more we’re trying to analyse web crawler results and then take action. We are not afraid to take legal action,” he said.
He added that the organisation, which has more than 175 members covering industries such as fashion and electronics, has helped remove about 300 online counterfeit websites each month in 2012.
“First we go the registrant of the website, but it can be very difficult to find. Then we go to the Internet service provider and ask it to take the site offline. This is working well, with a success rate of 75 percent of sites removed. However, we need to get to at least 90 percent.”
The chair of the session Brohm was speaking in, Dutch IP lawyer Joris van Manen, said React will “never get the 100 per cent success rate: that is the reality of the Internet”.
The session also heard from Josefine Svensson, regional anti-counterfeit manager at Sony Mobile, and Stephane Malec, head of brand protection, Europe and Internet, at Toyota.
Svensson said Sony uses “Internet sweeps” to monitor online infringement, mainly finding goods that violate the company’s registered Community designs, rather than its trademarks.
“We have a 70 per cent success rate in identifying infringing goods,” she said.
But Malec said he does not use such search facilities, preferring to employ “key word searches led by investigators” instead.
“It’s the only way to avoid false positives. For example, there can be legitimate compatible parts out there and the fair use of our logo.”
Peter Møller Jensen, vice president of EU relations and regulatory affairs at Visa Europe, said the payment provider does assist with alleged IP infringements online, but the “complex legal issues around the Internet and e-commerce require stakeholders to cooperate”.
He said: “We cannot determine infringement—we must leave this to the rights holders.”
