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Business |
CHM, BAT leading the war against
piracy
THE campaign being waged by Chin H
Meen (CHM) and British American Tobacco (BAT) against piracy is
effectively helping the Business Council of PNG (BCPNG) in
stemming the flood of counterfeit goods into the country.
CHM recently dealt with intellectual property rights (IPR)
violations by waging a series of awareness drive, while BAT
prevented the spread of counterfeit BAT products, Henry Kila,
chairman of the BCPNG said at
the 2007 APEC conference in Port Moresby.
Mr Kila stressed that to tackle such violation of IPR, a
partnership must exist between Government and private sector.
“Like many APEC economies and Pacific island countries, piracy
has plagued the PNG music industry and for CHM, it meant drop in
sales,” Mr Kila said.
And for this reason, the company has embarked on a two-tier
strategy identifying the importance of copyright protection.
CHM conducted workshops for stakeholders and such efforts
provided a reality check to the stakeholders on the challenges
piracy brings to the industry.
“Discussions with them showed that it wasn’t just economic loss
from piracy, but the linkage to the negative impacts on
investing into creativity,” Mr Kila said.
He said the second CHM strategy was proactive engagement with
law enforcement agencies in investigating, prosecuting and
constructing punitive measures of copyright infringers.
Mr Kila said currently, there was a case in the courts where CHM
was pursuing legal jurisprudence on creating case law to seek
the bar for punitive measures in copyright infringement.
While CHM sees that the domestic levels of piracy are still
manageable, it faces similar challenges in other countries where
it intends to bring its products.
Two years ago, it became difficult for BAT to distinguish its
product or products from a counterfeit.
“Apart from economic loss, a larger public policy issue was at
stake and this was the sub-standard nature the counterfeit
product brought to the consumer,” Mr Kila said.
With difficulty in identifying a genuine BAT product from a
counterfeit even through the use of the laboratory, BAT was left
to making the consumers aware on the differences between the two
products.
Mr Kila said after consultations, the BAT management agreed that
a new brand with new packaging and distinct consumption flavour
would reduce counterfeiting.
The strategy called for a halt in the distribution of previous
BAT products that had been difficult to separate from the
counterfeit.
Mr Kila said as a result, counterfeit suppliers and distributors
were immediately identified because they were trading on the old
brands that were no longer in the market.
 
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