February 22, 2002
‘7’
LAW MINISTER CALLS FOR DETERRENT ACTION AGAINST COUNTERFEITERS TO PROTECT BRANDS
The Union Minister of Law, Justice and Company Affairs, Shri Arun Jaitley has said that unless deterrent effect was increased to pinch pockets of copier and counterfeiters, the legitimate industry would not be able to protect their brands. Inaugurating a two-day National Workshop on Protecting Brands---A War Against Counterfeiting, organised by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) here today, Shri Jaitley suggested simplification of laws, especially criminal laws and ingenious efforts for swifter action against counterfeiters to protect brands and the genuine interest of trade, commerce and industry. He also suggested stronger measures against counterfeiters in order to protect brands and intellectual property rights.
Besides, the Law Minister sought the cooperation of the captains of industry to come out with measures against counterfeiters so that gains of illegal business and profits of crimes were denied altogether to copiers. In this connection, he called for measures for pinching the pockets of copier as the nature of crimes was changing fast and deterrent protective, preventive and precautionary measures be in position to deal with the menace of counterfeiting.
Talking of the challenges before the industry today the Minister said all of us should devise continuously harsher and quicker measures to stop the menace of counterfeiting.
The Law Minister analysed the nature of brand protection and ill-effect of counterfeiting and said that free trade must be fair trade. In addition, a combination of what was legal, ethical and commercially proper when counterfeited got diluted and such unethical practice could never be termed legal. Real genesis of the idea of brand protection was moral and legal and piracy of a brand was nothing but a commercial theft. Besides, a large number of factors went into building a brand and counterfeiting of established brand amounted to pinching of somebody’s pocket. Besides, it deceived consumers as entire exercise of counterfeiting was based on deception resulting in suffering of legitimate industry like music industry, text book industry, software industry, food and beverage industry and entire spectrum of products and services worldwide. It was in this context, that the Law Minister suggested that law had to be cleverer than the copier as the copier was piggying back on somebody else’s reputation and goodwill and in the process the original brands got diluted. Counterfeiting also hit a large economic activity by doing substantial damage to the products and services.
The President, FICCI, Shri R.S. Lodha, in his welcome address gave an overview of how inferior products by counterfeiters affected industry on a massive scale. He said that besides posing health and safety hazards to consumers, the menace of counterfeits and pass-offs led to a loss of around Rs. 2,500 crores to the industry in the country and the Government lost about Rs. 850 crores on account of duty evasion. The global value of fakes was about five billion US dollar, he added.
The two-day National Workshop is intended to workout measures for publicising negative economic impact of counterfeits and pass-offs, open communication challenges between the stakeholder to generate awareness and stimulate action, take actions against the infringers and advocate more effective enforcement of existing laws and regulations.