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| US, EU join forces to fight fake goods trade |
| June 19th, 2006 |
| By Doug Palmer Reuters |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and European Union are launching a joint campaign to fight the huge global trade in fake and pirated goods, beginning in Russia and China, EU officials said on Monday.
"Stepping up the enforcement fight required a joint strategy and it needed to have some teeth," EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said in a statement.
The initiative coincides with the annual U.S.-EU summit meeting in Vienna on Wednesday between President Bush, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel.
The International Chamber of Commerce has estimated worldwide sales of counterfeit goods at about $650 billion per year -- a figure roughly equal to half the world's annual energy trade or half the United States' annual export of goods and services, the Progressive Policy Institute has noted.
"The issue of intellectual property protection goes to the heart of the ability of the EU and the U.S. to compete in the global economy because our high-value goods have strong intellectual content," Mandelson said.
The global trade in fake goods ranges from medicines to electrical appliances to toys and auto parts while piracy robs producers of software, music, movies and books of potential sales.
The International Intellectual Property Alliance, which represents U.S. copyright holders, estimates piracy cost its companies at least $15.8 billion in global sales in 2005.
While the United States and the EU will focus initial efforts on reducing intellectual property theft in Russia and China, they also have major concerns throughout Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, the EU said in it statement.
The transatlantic trading partners will increase joint efforts to stop counterfeit goods at borders and create teams of U.S. and EU officials to work on reducing fake and pirated goods in third countries, the EU said.
EU seizures of counterfeit goods at the border increased by more than 1000 percent between 1998 and 2004, rising from 10 million in 1998 to over 103 million in 2004, the EU said.
The composition of the trade has changed from mostly luxury items in the 1980s to commonplace goods like food and drinks and almost every type of manufactured product, the EU said.
The only way the United States and European Union can compete with low-cost suppliers is through "innovation, invention and quality," EU Commission Vice President and Industry Commissioner Gunter Verheugen said in statement.
"When ideas or brands and products are pirated, ripped off and counterfeited, this strategy is doomed. This is why the EU and the US have joined forces to combat the pirating of products in a more effective way," Verheugen said. |
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