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BRUSSELS : Major industrialised countries announced plans on Tuesday for a new anti-counterfeiting pact as they seek to clamp down on money-spinning piracy in global trade.
The European Union, the United States and Japan all announced separately that they wanted to negotiate an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).
They indicated that Canada, South Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, and Switzerland were also on board.
"There has been communication between the EU and its partners and an expression of interest between various nations. We are all basically pulling on the same rope here," European Commission spokesman Michael Jennings said.
The EU's trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, said a new international anti-counterfeiting treaty "will strengthen global cooperation and establish new international norms, helping to create a new global gold standard on intellectual property rights".
"Today launches our joint efforts to confront counterfeiters and pirates across the global marketplace," said US Trade Representative Susan Schwab.
And in Japan a foreign ministry official said current World Trade Organisation rules were insufficient to control the piracy.
"But the regulations are not catching up with the current situation in which the trade in counterfeit goods is proliferating across the world through new means, for example, the Internet," the official said.
US officials said the planned agreement would not involve any changes to multilateral trade agreements under the WTO, but would seek to step up enforcement efforts against counterfeit and pirated goods.
Japan said a first round of talks would be held in Geneva this year with other concerned countries.
The European Commission said the pact would have three main planks: building international cooperation - leading to harmonised standards and better communication between authorities; establishing common enforcement practices; and creating a strong modern legal framework.
This framework should reflect "the changing nature of intellectual property theft in the global economy, including the rise of easy-to-copy digital storage mediums and the increasing danger of health threats from counterfeit food and pharmaceutical drugs," the European Commission said.
Twenty years ago, the counterfeiting problem affected chiefly the makers of luxury goods.
Last year, among the most popular counterfeit goods were cosmetics and personal care products and brand name foodstuffs and beverages, among the 130 million fake objects seized, an increase of 40 percent over the previous year.
There are also fake airplane parts, electrical appliances and toys.
"But most worrying is the booming trade in counterfeit medicines of which more than 2.7 million were intercepted at EU borders in 2006 and which are reckoned to account for almost 10 percent of world trade in medicines," the Commission said.
"Most of these fake drugs are headed for the world's poorest countries."
The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has estimated the value of global counterfeit goods in 2005 to be at least 200 billion dollars, while admitting that the figure could be several hundred billions of dollars higher.
Schwab was joined at a news conference by US business and congressional leaders and by diplomats from several countries.
The initiative was also swiftly endorsed by European industry groups.
Such an agreement "has the potential to be an important tool in the fight against counterfeiting and piracy," the Confederation of European Business said in a joint statement with three other industry groups. - AFP/de
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