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Tracking down watches on the Net
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Tracking down watches on the Net

Monday, 19 May 2008
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Christophe Roulet
Editor-in-chief, HH Journal

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As the recent Intellectual Property Day at Geneva University’s School of Law clearly spelled out, counterfeiting is a global scourge and the weapons with which to fight it still lack bite. The first in a three-part file.

Anyone not yet convinced that fake watches have spread like wildfire across the Internet needn’t look far in order to find proof. Enter “replica watches” into any search engine and millions of pages are instantly returned, enough to measure the sheer size of the problem. Rolex has the dubious honour of being counterfeiters’ favourite target. Fighting this tidal wave of fakes is precisely why the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry (FH) set up its Internet Cell in 2004. Operating independently of the Federation’s legal department, it brings together no fewer than 17 brands.

If there is no supply to be had, demand will automatically disappear.
Carole Aubert
Reduce visibility

“We now know the main reasons why counterfeiting moved on to the Web,” explained the Cell’s director Carole Aubert, speaking at the Intellectual Property Day organised by Geneva University School of Law. “A high level of visibility at little cost, no barriers to entry, dematerialised, anonymous means of payment, and the fact that political bodies have been slow to wake up to the facts, have all largely contributed to the spread of counterfeits online. The consequences for watchmakers are a breach of intellectual property rights and unfair competition that fuels the grey market, both phenomena made worse by the difficulties of identifying the people behind these offences. In this context, our role is to use supply and demand to make counterfeit products less visible on the Net. If there is no supply to be had, demand will automatically disappear.”

The first measures by the Cell have therefore been to dig deep into the Internet, beginning with sites that have been known to carry counterfeit products such as platforms like eBay or Ricardo, to tackle the root of the problem. Says Carole Aubert, “the distribution chain plays an important role in any type of online trading and we need to break this chain. One effective way to do this is to work with credit card companies and postal delivery services such as UPS, even with Customs to trace goods back to the sender’s address. Local authorities then carry out investigations in the country of origin.” More often than not, these enquiries lead the FH Internet Cell to implement measures to close down the indicted sites, take legal action against them and have listings for fraudulent products pulled down from intermediary sites. In 2007, 35,000 such listings were taken down as a result of action by the Cell.

Automatic counterfeit detection

Building on these initial results, the Cell decided to go a step further and develop software tools that will automate a large part of the data collection process and organise this data into a coherent base. One of its main partners for this has been the Forensic Science Institute in Lausanne. Recently, the project took on a European dimension with the aim of systematically and scientifically processing the mass of data available online. The first pilot prototype, which took two years to develop, will be released in June. The objective: to automatically track down counterfeits on the Web.

In addition to these measures, the FH Internet Cell puts together information packages, as making the public and the authorities aware of the problem is essential in the ongoing fight against fakes. “It’s vitally important to educate online buyers and to emphasise the legal responsibility of the different players through better cooperation between public and private bodies,” concludes Carole Aubert. “This also means putting up a strong international front, both politically and through laws.” Which is perhaps one of the biggest obstacles still to be overcome…

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