Editorials

A campaign stepping up efforts and reviving strategy to fight counterfeiting and piracy in the United States pharmaceutical market and other industries worldwide is rousing from slumber.

In response to a June 4 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development about the economic impact of counterfeiting and piracy, a Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy drew up a high intensity campaign to strengthen enforcement of U.S. Intellectual property rights laws.

Led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the coalition combines more than 200 disparate groups, ranging from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America to the Motion Picture Association of America. They have merged for this campaign on the premise that there is strength in unity.

"If all CACP members work toward protecting intellectual property rather than fending for themselves, they can make a difference," said Peter Pitts, a former Food and Drug Administration associate commissioner and current president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.

A victory against pirated movies or music also helps prevent counterfeit drugs from entering the country, he added.

Katie Wilson, spokesperson for the U.S. Chamber's Global Anti-Counterfeiting and Piracy Initiative, said the campaign will focus on six goals.

These are to increase resources at the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security; strengthen enforcement at U.S. borders; toughen penalties; improve coordination within the federal government; reform the civil and judicial processes and educate consumers.

A successful campaign model for the coalition, Wilson said, is the work mothers have done to prevent drunken driving.

Announced goals of the coalition came in the wake of growing threats to intellectual property. No one can say exactly how much is stolen but an OECD study reported there was as much as $200 billion worth of trade in counterfeited and pirated products in 2005. That excludes those produced domestically or distributed over the Internet.

Adding those items, authors of the OECD study said, the magnitude of counterfeiting and piracy worldwide could well be several hundred billion dollars more.

Wilson noted figures in that study are lower than those reported in other reports and the numbers are not broken into individual industry sectors.

Industries are encouraged by CACP to monitor counterfeiting and piracy, but Wilson said "that's a difficult thing to quantify."

Estimates of pharmaceutical counterfeiting still are disturbing. More than 10 percent of drugs worldwide are counterfeits, the FDA Web site projects, and in some countries more than 50 percent of the drug supplies are fake. A World Health Organization paper concluded that counterfeit drugs constitute 1 to 50 percent of the total pharmaceutical market.

"These unacceptably high levels of counterfeit drugs confirm that national (anti-piracy) measures are insufficient," the WHO authors commented.

Coalition efforts have managed to attract attention in government. Most public officials now have designated staff members to track intellectual property issues, Wilson said, and they also are beginning to understand the ramifications those issues have for the public.

In the Senate, Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, introduced FS 522, the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Act earlier this year to create an organized force to attack counterfeiters and pirates, heighten enforcement and develop a strategic plan to protect intellectual property.

A Bayh spokesperson said the bill would create an international task force to enforce each nation's domestic intellectual property laws, but little movement has been reported.

Most observers seem to agree that international law enforcement is a good thing, but question how effective such efforts would be. Some urge better education of the public about the dangers in buying international drugs and emphasis on the reliability of companies that go the extra mile to ensure their supply lines are secure.

A campaign to strengthen enforcement of U.S. intellectual property rights laws is welcome and deserves support. Creating more consumer awareness of their stake in the issue should be an important part of the effort.

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