In this roundtable, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) obtained insights from businesses, intellectual property (IP) rights holders, and other stakeholders regarding anti-counterfeiting and anti-piracy trends and strategies.
Counterfeit and pirated products are readily available to U.S. consumers through all forms of commerce, including physical markets, ecommerce, and social media sites. Many of these products endanger public health and safety as well as national security, and their presence is growing: in fiscal year 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection made over 27,000 seizures. The estimated retail value of these seized products added up to more than $3.3. billion, an increase of 152% over the previous year.
The trade in counterfeit and pirated products negatively impacts American innovation and erodes the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers and workers. For example, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, digital video piracy conservatively causes lost domestic revenues of at least $29.2 billion, and as much as $71.0 billion, annually.
This roundtable provided a forum for consumers, IP rights holders, representatives of online and physical marketplaces and platforms, and other private sector stakeholders to discuss:
- The recent evolution and growth in counterfeiting and piracy
- The types of harms that have been observed from the sale of counterfeit and pirated products
- Successful anti-counterfeiting and anti-piracy strategies
- Successful collaborative efforts between public and private partnerships to combat the sale of counterfeit and pirated products
- Effective technological solutions that are being used to stem the flow of counterfeit and pirated products entering into the marketplace
The roundtable was open to the public, and there was no charge to attend. Advanced registration, however, was required for both in-person and virtual attendance.
In addition to this roundtable, the USPTO published a Federal Register Notice soliciting written comments from the public regarding effective anticounterfeiting and antipiracy strategies. For more information, see the Federal Register Notice published on May 25, 2023. The comment period closed on August 23, 2023.
Agenda
Additional information
For more information, visit the registration page or contact Ameen.Imam@uspto.gov in the USPTO’s Office of Policy and International Affairs.
This virtual program is hosted by the USPTO’s Global Intellectual Property Academy, a unit of the USPTO’s Office of Policy and International Affairs (OPIA). The office advises the administration and other federal government departments and agencies on domestic and international IP legal and policy issues. It also provides technical assistance and training on IP-related matters to U.S. stakeholders and both U.S. and foreign government officials.
