ICE
“Criminals have international organisations and cooperation in place,” he says. “We obviously should have the same—if not better—to defeat them.” Barnett uses Kevin Xu as a prime example of this organised crime. Te Chinese national is believed to have been the largest online distributor of counterfeit pharmaceuticals in the world before, in 2009, a judge sentenced him to more than six-and- a-half years in prison. Bringing Xu to justice, aſter an investigation requiring undercover operations lasting a year, soon led to the arrest of more individuals in the UK. In a separate case in Baltimore in the US, law enforcement officials arrested nine individuals for importing huge volumes of counterfeit goods.
Focused: Erik Barnett, deputy director of European affairs of ICE's IPR Center
It is clear that the IPR Center has a wide-ranging remit, one that allows it to tackle individuals and organisations far beyond US borders. Tis extensive influence has attracted controversy and claims of bullying tactics, particularly in the case of O’Dwyer, a 23-year-old student at Sheffield University in the UK. Barnett, however, rejects the criticism and defends the work of
those working at the centre’s base in Arlington, Virginia. “Tese multilateral investigations are absolutely attacking criminal enterprises. But— and it’s somewhat understandable—for whatever reason, they don’t get the attention that you might get for arresting an individual running a number of piracy sites earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a year,” he says.
To support his assertions, Barnett details the centre’s achievements and the challenges it faces. From October 2010 to October 2011, Homeland Security Investigations—a division of ICE— made 8,556 ‘seizures’, valued at $483 million. A seizure can constitute one counterfeit handbag, for example, or a 40-feet long sea container storing a huge number of goods. Although border seizures have risen by 40 percent this year, officers must inspect an increasing number of small parcels. However, these parcels may only contain one or two goods, compared to 10,000 items on board a sea container.
“You either have to flood these facilities with inspectors, incur the cost and basically shut down commerce—which we cannot do—or you have
32 World Intellectual Property Review May/June 2012
www.worldipreview.com
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