Counterfeit Perfumes May Have Some Unusual Ingredients
Counterfeit Perfumes May Contain Urine, Bacteria, Antifreeze.
For most shoppers, getting fancy-looking goods at low prices is a good enough reason to buy counterfeit products. But a knockoff bottle of the sweet smelling stuff is not always a great deal, especially when it comes to counterfeit perfume, because a fake fragrance can get absorbed into the skin.
“Active ingredients found in counterfeit fragrance include things like urine, bacteria, antifreeze,” reports Valerie Salembier, senior vice president and publisher of Harper’s Bazaar.
Salembier and her staff have dedicated themselves to exposing counterfeits for more than six years. In the January issue of Harper’s Bazaar, they target fake fragrances. They brought the issue of counterfeit perfume to “GMA’s” attention.
“You’re putting something on your face, on your neck, on your wrists. Those are sensitive parts of the body, so, to have active ingredients that could endanger your life is a very serious health risk,” Salembier said.
The EU meeting with Latin America: will be May the month to see Association Agreements between the two?
Introduction of iPad means a huge jump in the piracy of ebooks is coming.
Introduction of iPad means a huge jump in the piracy of ebooks is coming.
Nils Montan | January 27, 2010 at 9:30 pm | Tags: antipiracy, copyright piracy, piracy | Categories: News | URL: http://wp.me/pl1MV-AP
Steve Jobs at Apple introduced the iPad today and already people are touting it as the Kindle Killer. Whatever the fate of the Kindle, the entire ebooks category is going to take a huge jump this year. Where there are sales of digital content, can piracy be far behind. I don’t think so and either does the Association of American Publishers.
New Study Documents Epidemic of Online Book Piracy Washington, DC, January 14, 2010— Nine million illegal downloads of copyright-protected books were documented during the closing months of 2009, according to a new study released today. The independent study, conducted by the online monitoring and enforcement service Attributor, looked at illegal downloads of 913 popular titles. On average, each of the titles tracked was downloaded approximately 10,000 times. “This new study confirms that book piracy on the Internet has reached epidemic proportions. Unchecked, that piracy will drain the creative energy of American publishing. Those 9 million pirated books should be a call-to-arms for policymakers, educators, and every reader who cares about the future of digital and printed books,” said Tom Allen, President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers. The study can be found online at http://www.attributor.com/docs/Attributor_Book_Anti-Piracy_Research_Findings.pdf. For more information about digital piracy of books contact Ed McCoyd, Executive Director for Digital, Environmental & Accessibility Affairs at the Association of American Publishers (emccoyd@publishers.org).
ACTA Negotiations Continue In Mexico, But Secrecy Remains A Concern
Internet industry figures fear that ACTA will force participating countries to introduce tough penalties for copyright breaches to bring them into line with US laws. But the impact on many countries might be limited because the governments have already adopted many US measures as part of an earlier trade agreements between the nations.
Negotiations, which have gone for more than two years, continue with four days of meetings in Guadalajara, Mexico, starting today.
The agenda has set aside several hours for discussion of civil enforcement, border measures and enforcement procedures but has scheduled just an hour for discussion of transparency, adding to fears of secrecy among critics of the agreement.
The accord is intended to upgrade laws surrounding copyright protection for digital content following an explosion in piracy and a booming trade in counterfeit goods.
The treaty is expected to empower copyright holders, including major music and film studios, and put extra responsibility on the shoulders of internet service providers to assist with enforcement.
Participating countries – mostly developed nations, including the US, Japan, Australia and the members of the European Union – have agreed not to release detail of discussions beyond a broad overview at the start of discussions. In fact, all the governments participating in the negotiations are bound by confidentiality agreements.
In China – Is Anything Ever Fair? Google and Counterfeiting
The recent bruhaha between Google and the Chinese government over censorship and the government’s hacking of some gmails reminds me how much every IP owner in the world has suffered as a result of the complicity of the Chinese government with counterfeiting and piracy over the last 35 years – sometimes directly, as in the cases were members of the government or armed forces actually own the plants making the illegal stuff – but more commonly in the carefully built rope-a-dope creation of an enforcement system guaranteed to do nothing. I don’t know about you, but I am really pulling for Google on this one.
What use is “fair” under the law of copyright?
Fair Use is one of those terms that can raise a lot of passion among people. Some people today say that all use should be more or less “fair” and it is unfair for big media companies to try and hassle people. The traditionalists in the crowd say that fair use is merely a small limitation on the rights of copyright owners so that others may use portions of their works for certain purposes.
This is truly one of the fascinating discussions of our times in IP law – but I am not going there today. Later on we will discuss these issues in some depth. Today, since I don’t want you to be charged with copyright infringement when you think your use is fair, I am going to give you the black letter traditionalist view of the law of fair use. Fair enough?
Some uses of a copyrighted work, let’s say a novel, are so useful to society, that copyright law as always recognized the concept of fair use. For example, it would be very difficult to review our novel if the reviewer could not copy, or site for the reader in the review, portions of the copyrighted work. Accordingly, a reviewer under the fair use doctrine has that right.
The idea is that what otherwise would be infringement is excused or privileged because the work is being used for a transformative purpose such as research, scholarship, criticism, or journalism. It is important to remember that fair use is an affirmative defense rather than an affirmative right. This means that a particular use only gets established as a fair use if the copyright owner decides to file and lawsuit. Then, it’s up to you as the defendant to say that your use fits into one of the categories that the law will recognize.
When thinking about whether an alleged infringement should be excused on the basis of fair use, a court will use several factors, including the purpose of the use, the character of the use, the amount and substantially of the portion of the work used, and the effect of the use on the market for the copyrighted work.
In our novel example, it will be fair use for me to take portions of the work and refer to them in my review. We want books to be reviewed and my review (even if it is a bad one) will not damage the market for the book in a copyright sense. If I take the entire file of an ebook version of the novel and upload it for thousands of people to read – well, you know, that’s probably not “fair use.”
When blogging, it’s perfectly cool to take some paragraphs from some one’s blog if you are commenting on them and if you attribute the source. Just to copy the blog, or substantial portions of the blog and palm it off as your own may get you into trouble.
(originally published in The Blogger’s Bulletin)
Please Come To Boston In The Sprintime – INTA and IACC
Since today is the first day that one is able to register for the International Trademark Association Meeting in Boston (the INTA Annual Meeting), it reminded me that the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (the IACC) will also be holding its Annual Meeting in Beantown right before the INTA Meeting.
The great Rob Holmes and I will be doing some special stuff leading up to and especially during these meetings for our IP community and we hope you will join us there. Don’t worry, plenty of time for details in the future.
Plus, as I like to say -” if you can’t find out what Holmes and Montan are up to – you aren’t trying too hard.”
Defendanat in KaZaA case seeks to reduce damages
Last July, a jury of his peers in Boston found defendant Joel Tenenbaum liable for copyright infringement to the tune of $675,000, or, $22,000 per song that he shared over the KaZaA peer-to-per file sharing network (parents of college aged students downloading music in their dorms take note). Tenenbaum is, of course, represented by some of the best lawyers in the land who want music and all copyrighted works to be free. His lawyers have filed a goofy brief with the court asking that the award be overturned as it is unconstitutionally too high. Too bad there isn’t such a rule in the law that I am aware of. Mr. Tenenbaum – pay up.
Origin of the term “Counterfeit”
The word “Counterfeit” originated in the English language from around 1250 to 1300, the time of so-called Middle English. The word was at that time “conuntrefeten” and was taken from the Middle French world “contrefait” or “contrefaire,” which meant to imitate in a drawing or painting an original article.
My New Year’s Wishes for IP Enforcement
Ah, it’s the end of the year and the time for all the “best of” lists and “predictions” for the year to come.
I don’t have either of these, but I do have some thoughts on some things I would like to see start to develop next year.
First – I would like to see some enforcement conferences where presenters do not rehash the same old tired slogans and statistics. I am guilty of this too – so I pledge to reform.
Second – I would like to see Brand Owners start to spend the money in their enforcement budgets that is commensurate with the problem. The bad guys are simply outspending the good guys. Yes, I know that times are tough, but how many layoffs and budget cuts do you think the pirates and counterfeiters experienced during the past two years? Come on, if this is really the “crime of the 21st century,” shouldn’t the companies that are getting harmed the most do a little more about it?
Third – I would like to see more action and less lip service from government agencies all over the world. It’s too easy now to say that you are doing something about a problem. Don’t show up at a meeting and profess your concern about an issue and then forget about it as soon as you leave the hall.
Fourth – I would like to find some way to fund police departments around the word in developing countries so that they can get the training and have the equipment they need to get the job done.
Fifth – I would like to see China cut the supply of counterfeit products to the rest of the world by at least 30%.
OK, the last wish is a real pipe dream, I grant you. But maybe we can do something about the other four?
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