The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) closed today the celebration of its first-ever ASEAN IP Enforcement Week, an event aimed at highlighting the need for greater cooperation in the region to strengthen enforcement measures against growing counterfeiting and piracy activities.

The celebration was proposed by the Philippines who chairs the ASEAN Network of IP Enforcement Experts (ANIEE), the lead group in implementing intellectual property (IP) rights enforcement initiatives under the economic bloc’s IP Rights Action Plan 2016-2025. The ANIEE also agreed to the Philippines’ proposal of conducting the event annually.

“The event allowed us to look back and celebrate our gains thus far,” AWGIPC  Chair and Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) Director General Rowel S. Barba stated.

Reports to the Philippines’ IPOPHL led to the National Bureau of Investigation’s seizure of nearly $2 million worth of allegedly counterfeit Louis Vuitton products, in a raid conducted and captured at a live selling event.

Barba noted how anti-piracy, anti-counterfeiting, and information awareness campaigns in the region have been intensifying over the years.

He also celebrated the heightened online presence of ASEAN member-states’ (AMS) IP Offices with their joint development of creative IP awareness materials, as well as with their unified adoption of the hashtag “#ASEANrespectsIP” in all their national IP awareness campaign materials.

To inspire more action among other AMS, Singapore shared some of its enforcement activities during the pandemic, particularly its seizure operations on counterfeit goods and arrests of the alleged IP violators.

Singapore’s police arrested two women and one man for allegedly selling $239,000 worth of counterfeit goods from raids at the Nex shopping mall and Jurong Point shopping centre in March 2020.

Thailand and Brunei also shared their recent enforcement activities, such as conducting a virtual destruction ceremony of confiscated counterfeit goods and holding various capacity-building activities, respectively.

With the ASEAN IP Enforcement Week celebration, the region aims to sustain its momentum by mobilizing greater regional coordination in the face of new challenges to enforcement.

Brunei Darussalam holds a workshop to help more key actors in enforcement understand its criminal justice system and IP prosecution process.

“Counterfeiting and piracy have become more rampant in recent months due to the increased use of online platforms where trade is highly complex to regulate and bad actors are hard to track,” Barba said.

“This IP Enforcement Week is the ASEAN way to signify our commitment to bolster proactive efforts, explore new mechanisms for faster and more effective coordination, and heighten our awareness campaigns to help everyone see the real threats of counterfeiting and piracy to our recovery, resilience and prosperity,” Barba added.

Thailand’s Department of Intellectual Property, in collaboration with the Internal Security Operations Command, the Royal Thai Police, the Thai Customs Department, the Department of Special Investigation, and IPR owners, held in September 2021 its virtual destruction ceremony to raise awareness on IP and to deter infringements.