Posts Tagged: "anticounterfeiting"

Yesterday was World Anti-Counterfeiting Day (though there’s not much available online to prove it). Of course, counterfeits have proliferated over the last year, as people stayed home and shopped online more than ever before. A January 2021 report by Digital Commerce 360 found that U.S. ecommerce sales grew by 44% last year over 2019—” the highest annual U.S. ecommerce growth in at least two decades.” As part of a report released yesterday on how to address the sale of counterfeits online, the International Trademark Association (INTA) said that—even in more normal times—a 2020 Department of Homeland Security report found that “e-commerce year-over-year retail sales grew by 13.3 percent in the second quarter of 2019 while total retail sales increased by only 3.2 percent as brick-and-mortar retail continued its relative decline.”

To do business in Africa, it is important to understand how African countries conduct trade and commerce among themselves and with the rest of the world. Specifically, IP right holders navigating the continent would be better served by an informed economic roadmap into the continent. A proper understanding of the business terrain and IP regimes becomes important for global brands looking to pitch their tent in Africa. This article focuses on West Africa and will inform international investors and global brands about the market and the interplay between trade, commerce and IP. It also proffers solutions to key concerns that can derail the commercial interest in the region.

On April 2, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued a ruling absolving e-commerce giant Amazon.com of trademark infringement allegations brought by a German perfume distributor seeking redress for Amazon’s storage and distribution of brand-infringing perfume products sold by third-party sellers. The decision, issued by the CJEU’s Fifth Chamber, holds that Amazon’s mere storage of infringing goods in the context of its online marketplace does not constitute an infringement of trademark rights by Amazon.

Under normal circumstances, infringement and misappropriation of the intellectual property (IP) rights of others are subject to civil liability under U.S. federal (and some states’) law; the remedies for those whose rights have been violated typically include money damages or some form of equitable relief, such as an injunction. However, sometimes the conduct of offenders is so egregious and the remedies so inadequate that pursuit of a private cause of action is insufficient to make IP owners whole. To make matters worse, civil remedies do little to deter further infringement or misappropriation on the part of individuals and entities with more than enough money to game the system. Known as efficient infringers, according to some IP practitioners, they have mastered the business practice of paying out as little in damages as possible and refusing to negotiate licenses with IP owners, all the while bullying IP owners into spending their much smaller fortunes in order to defend their IP rights or to forfeit them—the end result sometimes being the invalidation or cancellation of their IP. Accordingly, lawmakers have enacted legislation with the goal of creating true deterrents against infringement and misappropriation by imposing criminal sanctions on a narrow set of conditions associated with infringement and misappropriation. However, the law does not criminally punish infringement of a particular type of IP: patents.