WIPO calls on governments to implement laws on counterfeit goods

The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has appealed to all governments to have the political will to implement legislation on counterfeiting of goods the world over to improve their economies.

According to the WIPO, counterfeit goods posed a danger to public health and sapped the economies of nations and that if stringent measures were not adopted to address the situation the world, especially the developing countries, stood the risk of remaining in perpetual poverty.

Speaking at the opening of a three-day regional workshop on “The dangers of counterfeiting goods to public health” in Mombasa on Monday, Mrs Louise Van Greunen, Director of building respect for Intellectual Property (IP) at WIPO described counterfeiting as the enemy of economic growth.

The objective of the workshop is to spread a better understanding of IP rights among the relevant audiences and to raise public awareness about the health and safety risks associated with buying counterfeit goods.

WIPO organised the workshop in collaboration with the United States Department of State with assistance from the Anti-Counterfeit Agency of Kenya.

Areas of concern that the workshop seeks to discuss include, the international legal framework, substantive national legal framework, Enforcement in terms of strategic goal VI of WIPO, socio-economic impact, health and sustainable development, and challenges faced by the anti-counterfeiting agencies.

Mrs Greunen said almost every commodity on the market the world over had been pirated in some form, which was making it difficult for the originators to benefit from their creativity and that the political will to implement legislation on counterfeiting was waning.

“The only way intellectual property owners can benefit from their creativity is to have strong implementable anti-counterfeiting laws to ensure that pirated goods become a disincentive”, she said.

She added that the public was at risk if they continued to patronise counterfeit goods especially consumables, which had adverse effects and untold consequences on their health, saying “Cheap is always expensive and people must always be cautious of what they purchase from the market.”

Mr Amason Jeffa Kingi, Kenya’s Acting Minister of Industrialisation, said the Kenyan government had waged a war against counterfeiting goods and would continue to collaborate with WIPO and other stakeholders to ensure that the situation improved.

He said unwholesome goods flooded African markets and regretted that those goods entered Africa through approved roots without proper mechanisms put in place to detect them and called for continued collaboration with the intelligence and security agencies to address the problem.

Source: GNA