How to deal with customs in Asia

The opening session of the Forum dealt with how to work with Customs when managing IP investigation and a panel on day two looked at how IP owners can work with Customs authorities in India.

"A lot of law enforcement units in the region are incompletely trained to deal with anti-counterfeiting and IP protection issues, both funding and manpower are limited," said Bob Youill, vice president of brand protection services for FTI-International Risk.

Youill said that IP owners first needed to help themselves by making sure that their rights were registered in the countries where they wanted to enforce them.

He said it was crucial that IP owners then developed a specific plan of action, had in-house expertise and a specific point of contact for Customs authorities to deal with.

"Thirty percent of the time, people we work with do not have in-house expertise to identify the products that are seized," he said.

With these basics in place, Youill said that it was important for brand owners to make the effort to promote their case to Customs, which has many other issues to deal with apart from IP enforcement.

When preparing to put their case to Customs, Youill said that brand owners should look into whether the case involves organized crime, child labour, smuggling, tax avoidance, health and safety dangers or corruption.

"If you can show that there is organized crime behind the theft I guarantee you will get a lot more attention," he added.

Finally, Youill said it was important that brand owners demonstrate their commitment by attending raids and helping the authorities follow up with a criminal prosecution.

At the end of the session, Mayank Vaid, director of brand enforcement in the Asia-Pacific region for Louis Vuitton, agreed with these points and stressed the importance of teamwork between industry and government. 

To show the international nature of counterfeiting, Vaid used the example of a shipment of counterfeit goods that was seized at Incheon airport in Seoul going from China to LA. 

The goods were being trans-shipped through Korea because it has a reputation for producing so-called triple-A grade fakes and this meant that they could be relabeled before going to the US.

Vaid also said that it was important to build good relationships not only with Customs but with other service providers: "Make sure you investigate the investigators."

Richard Halverson, unit chief at the National IPR Coordination Center, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Albert Ho, head of the IP Investigation Bureau for Hong Kong Customs also spoke at the session.

Both talked about initiatives to crack down on online infringement. Halverson told the audience about Operation in Our Sites, which targets websites that sell counterfeit or pirated products.

Ho said that Hong Kong Customs last year managed to get the first successful enforcement action in Asia against people sharing files using a so-called Top site - a term for very fast FTP servers using high-bandwidth internet connections that distribute pirated content. 

In June 2009 two men were arrested and four computers containing over 3,400 copyright works were seized. Ho claimed that this action had dramatically reduced use of Top sites within the Hong Kong SAR.