Vision - May/June 2008 - (Page 22)

Hurdl CE Makers Confront IP T By Gary Arlen in BRIC Countries With great opportunities come great challenges. hat’s one way to look at “BRIC”—the highgrowth, tantalizing markets for technology products in Brazil, Russia, India and China. These emerging economies have a ravenous appetite for CE devices, driven by their growing middle-class clientele. But they also condone—or are often casually cavalier about—fundamental business building blocks such as patents, trademarks and copyrights. All four nations consistently appear atop the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) annual “watch list” of countries where enforcement of global Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) is haphazard, at best. As a result, CE companies—much as firms in the pharmaceutical, apparel and other industries—face frequent barriers as they expand into the alluring BRIC territories. These countries have become the darlings of investors seeking high-growth markets. But the BRIC bloc also looms large in counterfeit knock-offs and other contraband deals that amount to $250 billion annually worldwide, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) analysis. May/June 2008 Fake technology hardware alone represents a $100 billion problem, according to the Alliance for Gray Market and Counterfeit Abatement (www.agmaglobal.org). That is three times greater than purloined software and ten times the scale of movie or music “piracy.” Electronics devices pose a variety of challenges, explains J. Scott Ballman, unit chief of commercial fraud and IPR investigations at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency within the Department of Homeland Security. “We see a lot of things coming from all of these countries,” says Ballman, pointing to realities of the new global IPR problem. “Reverse engineering is here to stay,” he says, citing just one of the challenges facing businesses and government enforcement agencies. IPR problems manifest themselves in many ways—both in goods aimed at U.S. customers (such as counterfeit versions of trademarked/patented products) and worldwide (e.g. appropriation of trademarks). For example, a U.S. company seeking to start doing business abroad may find that its brands and trademarks already have been registered by an unrelated company. Patents and trademarks are protected on a “country-by-country basis,” explains Susan Anthony, an attorney advisor in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) Office of Intellectual Property Policy and Enforcement. “In most countries, the law says ‘first to file,’” which means that “squatters can take names” of companies from other countries, then operate under those brands and use marks already held by other companies in the U.S. or elsewhere. “Understand the need to protect yourself in countries in which you’d like to expand,” she recommends, citing examples of compawww.ce.org 22 http://www.agmaglobal.org http://www.ce.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Vision - May/June 2008

Vision - May/June 2008 Contents Shapiro's Spectrum In This Issue The Economist C4 Trends Visionary Making the Smartphone Truly Intelligent Shipping Strategies for CE Companies IP in BRIC Countries CEA Newsline Tech Speak Eye on Business Tech Policy Market Insider Just the Stats

Vision - May/June 2008

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