- In 2010, the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) conducted regional border trainings programs that focused on IPR enforcement in Angola, Brunei, Egypt, Mali, Peru, Ukraine, and Thailand.
- The Department of State provides training funds each year to U.S. Government agencies that provide IPR enforcement training and technical assistance to foreign governments. The agencies that provide such training include the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the USPTO, CBP and DHS's Immigrations and Customs Enforcement bureau. In 2010, the State Department provided funds for 11 training programs for customs, police, and judicial officials from various trading partners including Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, and Vietnam, as well as regional groups, including ASEAN, and through regional trainings in the South Asia region, including India, and in sub-Saharan Africa. The U.S. Government works collaboratively on many of these training programs with the private sector and with various international entities such as WIPO, and with regional organizations, such as the APEC Intellectual Property Experts Group.
- The Department of Commerce's Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP) provides training to foreign lawmakers, regulators, judges, and educators focused on IPR enforcement. CLDP currently works with more than 35 governments and has conducted cooperative programs in Central and Eastern Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Middle East, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. For example, since 2009, CLDP has organized annual judicial capacity building programs in Bosnia-Herzegovina focused on the fair, predictable, and efficient adjudication of intellectual property cases. In Egypt, CLDP conducted a two-day training workshop in December 2010 at the Internal Trade Development Authority for trademark officers and board of appeals judges to provide an overview of the trademark system in the United Sates, and to address various topics, including the likelihood of confusion standard, distinctiveness of marks, and registration of trade dress. In Pakistan, CLDP has trained justices from Pakistan's national and regional supreme courts on IPR enforcement. In Sub-Saharan Africa, CLDP organized interagency bilateral IPR enforcement programs in Ghana, Liberia, and Mali, and regional IPR programs in Botswana, Senegal, and Uganda.
Although many trading partners have implemented IPR legislation, a lack of criminal prosecutions and deterrent sentencing has reduced the effectiveness of IPR enforcement in many regions. These problems result from several factors, including a lack of knowledge of IPR law on the part of judges and enforcement officials, and insufficient enforcement resources. The United States welcomes steps by a number of trading partners to educate their judiciary and enforcement officials on IPR matters. The United States will continue to work collaboratively with trading partners to address these issues.
Trends in Trademark Counterfeiting and Copyright Piracy
Counterfeiting has evolved in recent years from a localized industry concentrated on copying high-end designer goods to a sophisticated global business involving the mass production and sale of a vast array of fake goods, including items such as counterfeit medicines, health care products, food
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