post Friday September 27, 2013
The City of London police inaugurated a new police unit devoted for fighting counterfeits. The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) arrested two individuals on the 13th of September during its first raid.
The arrested individuals are suspects of importing counterfeit DVD box sets and selling them online as genuine products. It is estimated that the confiscated items are worth £40,000, and they relate to popular TV series.
Adrian Leppard, police commissioner of City of London, said when talking about IP crime: "Intellectual property crime is already costing our economy hundreds of millions of pounds a year and placing thousands of jobs under threat, and left unchecked and free to feed on new technology could destroy some of our most creative and productive industries.”
The launch of this unit is one more of the steps already done by the British police to prevent the spread of counterfeits. According to Leppard: "Launching PIPCU we are making a statement of intent and sending out a clear warning to organised crime that the UK has just become a more hostile place for those who seek to make criminal capital on the back of others' honest endeavours."
The new police unit is founded by the Intellectual Property Office of the British government. Its objective is to limit and prevent on online offences of intellectual property rights. Their actions will include investigation of websites offering illegal content in the UK and proactively seek ways to stop IP crime.
Online crimes cost the creative industries globally approximately $80bn, a figure expected to triple by 2015. The number of people visiting websites with illegal content is approximated to 7 million a month in the UK. Therefore, the introduction of the new police unit is an essential step in the progress on fighting intellectual property crime.
Source: theguardian.com
Image source: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
