ICCE delegates fly with the Hawks at international IP conference in South Africa.
Using technology to inform the public about the dangers of fake goods and support investigations against counterfeiters was a central theme at this year’s Interpol Intellectual Property Crime Conference in South Africa.
More than 500 delegates, representing commercial interests, standards agencies and law enforcement agencies met at the 13th annual event, held on 22-23 October in Cape Town.
The event was co-hosted by Interpol and the South African Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI), known as the Hawks, which targets serious organised crime, economic crime and corruption in the country.
Paul Williamson, Regional Investigations Manager for EMEA was representing, HP Inc. which was also a sponsor for the event.
“The conference reinforces the importance of IP crime and how seriously it’s taken in South Africa,” said Paul.
“We particularly wanted to get an understanding from the event about South Africa because it’s a priority market for HP. It’s very important for us to build good relations with law enforcement organisations in the country and work together on cases, so we were very fortunate to have the opportunity to talk with senior commanders of the Hawks about IP crime.”
As well as HP Inc, Canon was also represented at the conference. Both manufacturers are members of ICCE, the Imaging Consumables Coalition of Europe, Middle East and Africa.
ICCE
For more than 20 years ICCE has worked with law enforcement agencies within the EMEA zone to protect consumers and industry from counterfeit printer supplies, including cartridges, ink and toner.
Members of the organisation work to exchange information between different law enforcement organisations within their area of operation as well as run training events for frontline customs officers.
Using technology and networking to beat counterfeiters
The objective of the international conference was to equip Intellectual Property crime investigators with the necessary knowledge and skills required to plan and run successful interventions against the activities of transnational, organized IP crime, in partnership with other stakeholders.
This year’s Conference was co-hosted by INTERPOL and the South African Police Service’s Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation and much of the focus was on inter-agency collaboration to beat counterfeiting.
Another major theme was the use of technology, including converting data into actionable intelligence; leveraging technology to support learning in capacity building programmes; understanding cryptocurrencies; strategies to address counterfeiters in the online environment; communicating warnings about counterfeit goods to the general public and conducting enforcement investigations.
For more details about ICCE visit www.icce.net or you can follow ICCE on Twitter @ICCEfightsfakes.
