Just imagine the taxes which would have otherwise gone to the government had those fake merchandise been manufactured by legitimate firms!
The culprit? Violators of the Intellectual Property Rights law!
It is one teeth-gnashing dereliction that should not come about if government would only be more consistent and serious in its campaign against the manufacture and sale of bootleg items.
Those in the know are saying that the value of those confiscated goods would easily double if the authorities were relentless in their drive.
Every now and then, I am given a number of cases where there is flagrant violation of the IPR laws. I have written about this deplorable infraction in three of my columns from 2000 to 2002.
Scientists, inventors, creative artists, investors, and advocates of IPR protection are alarmed. They are one in saying that this time the government must put more teeth in laws on counterfeiting.
And, of course, protect those whose products are patented.
Lately, it came to my attention about an alleged infringement of its product, the patented light reflector. The manufacturer – Maxilum, Inc. – has been making fluorescent reflectors for a good part of its 25-year corporate existence.
It filed a complaint with the Mandaluyong Regional Trial Court against a company with a manufacturing facility in Cavite. An unnamed supplier of the later was also included in the charge sheet. The complaint’ – alleged infringement of Maxilum’s patented light reflector by using copies of its product in the lighting fixtures at the company’s manufacturing facility in General Trias, Cavite.
It appears that the company had sourced those lighting fixtures having Maxilum’s patented light reflector from another supplier without the authority from the latter.
In December, 1997, and February, 2001, the complainant Maxilum had conducted three product demonstrations at the Cavite facility to show the use, operation, and energy-conservation efficiency of Maxilum’s patented light reflector. Maxilum successfully showed that by installing its patented reflector, two fluorescent bulbs could more than illuminate the same space that four bulbs used to light.
When the company failed to negotiate for the purchase of Maxilum’s product, the latter sent a follow-up letter on its offer, with special emphasis on its intellectual property rights to its patented reflector, concerned that there were "existing numerous simulations" of the product in the market.
Early this year, Maxilum learned that the defendant had used an allegedly "infringing product" it acquired from an unnamed company, prompting the plaintiff to resort to legal action.
This particular case and similar other cases on IPR violations is a compelling justification for the streamlining of the Intellectual Property Office under the Department of Trade and Industry, headed by Undersecretary Adrian S. Cristobal Jr., as its director-general.
The recent proposal of Cristobal for some cities to create special courts that would handle exclusively cases of IPR violations currently being heard in regular courts could go a long way in expeditiously settling those disputes to the satisfaction of all parties concerned.
(Note: Quezon City has already this special court in existence for the past several years.)
