Nike, Google and Qualcomm back counterfeit legislation
Members of the Intellectual Property Owners Association have backed bipartisan legislation to authorise US Customs and Border Protection to seize imports that infringe design patents.
Introduced by US Senators Thom Tillis, Chris Coons, Bill Cassidy, and Mazie Hirono on Thursday, December 5, the Counterfeit Goods Seizure Act of 2019 would give design patents the same protections given to copyrights and trademarks at the border.
Currently, customs is limited to enforcing exclusion orders issued by the US International Trade Commission (ITC) where a design patent has been infringed.
Tillis said: “The inflow of counterfeit goods into the US is an issue that affects American consumers and businesses alike and results in the American economy losing billions of dollars every year.”
Global sales of counterfeit and pirated goods jumped to €460 billion ($509 billion) a year in 2016, amounting to 3.3% of world trade, according to a recent report from the European Union Intellectual Property Office’s (EUIPO) Observatory and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The Intellectual Property Owners Association, whose members include Nike, Google and Qualcomm, and the American Intellectual Property Law Association wrote a letter of support for the bill.
“We support this legislation because it makes the straightforward change required to adapt CBP’s existing enforcement mechanisms and tools to include the enforcement of design patents,” the letter said.
According to the associations, many US trading partners, such as the European Union and Japan, have established procedures enabling the enforcement of design rights by their respective customs agencies.
They added: “Updating US law to do the same would bring the US in line with international norms and would give CBP greater ability to help protect domestic markets from counterfeit and knockoff goods.”
Nike, Google and Qualcomm are also members of the International Trademark Association, which wrote a letter of support for the bill, which it said would “help stem the flood of counterfeit goods entering the US, and thus help protect consumers and US brand owners alike”.
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