May 2013

Fake Dr Dre headphones ‘one of most seized items’

Some 200,000 pairs have been taken by officers and customs at UK ports. The organisation said it was the first time it had seen the mass production of counterfeit headphones. “It’s a trend – Dr Dre is a leading headphone and that’s what counterfeiters will go after,” Trading Standards’ Tony Shore told Radio 4’s You and Yours. Beats by Dr Dre are available in six different models that cost between £120 and £500, however you and yours found sets on sale at a market in Cambridge for £15. Trading Standards said it had never seen a problem with counterfeit headphones prior to this particular brand being released. “They’re quite sophisticated as a counterfeit item,” Mr Shore said. “Somebody is using the brand to make money illegally, which takes money out of future products.” Consumers are advised to check the wiring of the headphones and quality of the ear padding to check if it is a fake. Other signs include the cable not being detachable from the headphone. Beats by Dre had no comment on the issue, but offered tips on how to spot a counterfeit including only buying from authorised dealers.  You and Yours asked Brit award-winning record producer Steve Levine to compare the fakes with the genuine product. He noted the packaging was “about two thirds of the size…it’s very flimsy”. He added music fans were better off spending £15 on headphones without a big brand name for decent quality music, rather than buying a copy. “[The fakes] probably cost about £1 to make – they are such rubbish headphones.” There has been a huge growth in the UK headphone market with sales reaching an all-time high. In 2012 more than 11 million pairs were sold – five million more than in 2008. Global market researcher GFK predicts headphones sales are likely to grow further as MP3 players drop in value – meaning it could be the biggest single part of the audio market in Great Britain by the end of 2013.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22469347

PharmaSecure goes mobile in battle against fake drugs

Counterfeit drugs affected people in 124 countries in 2011. Among them was India, where 20% of the drugs on the market are fake, according to the World Health Organisation. It’s a global war, hitting the developing world hard, says thePharmaceutical Security Institute, a not-for-profit network of the security divisions of 25 big pharma companies. Counterfeit drugs, which are also referred to as substitute or falsified drugs, are a $75bn-200bn marketaccording to estimates by Deloitte. Roger Bate, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, calculates that at least 100,000 people, mainly in poor countries, die annually from fake drugs. Asia has the most confiscations, but data – the bulk of which is withheld by pharma companies and governments – is lacking and statistics are estimated. However, a 29-year-old from New Hampshire has decided to take on this battle from his office in a clocktower building in Gurgaon, in the Indian state of Haryana. Nathan Sigworth and a fellow Dartmouth College graduate, N Taylor Thompson, who has since left, foundedPharmaSecure in 2007. Sigworth is now chief executive of the company, which is based in Gurgaon and Lebanon, New Hampshire, and prints unique codes on medicines to enable consumers to verify their validity and potency using their phones. PharmaSecure is not the only company providing medical authentications. Sproxil and mPedigree are also using mobile technology to authenticate drugs, but do not operate on the same scale as PharmaSecure, which will soon be operating beyond India and has produced more than 500bn coded packages. Up to 2m packages are coded every day, says Sigworth. “Even though we’re churning out so many meds, we are still only saturating 5% of the Indian market. We are now working hard to make this scale,” he says. That means integrating with pharmaceuticals. It’s merely a matter of time, says Sigworth; pharma companies that previously printed codes on only three of their 17 medicines are now authenticating all of them. Sigworth began digging into healthcare as a college student, volunteering in hospitals in rural India. “That’s where I saw how cheap human labour is. In some cases, patients would not be given injections because they could just be monitored instead by staff to make sure their condition did not worsen.

“http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/may/09/source-code-pharmasecure-fake-drugs

Queen’s speech: selling counterfeit goods to be made criminal offence

Stealing registered designs and selling counterfeit products for profit will become a criminal offence punishable by up to 10 years in prison, the government’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has announced. The measure, confirmed in the Queen’s speech, will provide designers of cars, smart phones, furniture, computers and other manufactured items with the same level of protection that prohibits the distribution of pirated DVDs and films. According to the brief outline given to parliament, the bill in which the measure will appear is intended to “make it easier for businesses to protect their intellectual property”. The changes come in response to the Hargreaves review of intellectual property rights, which was commissioned by the prime minister and published in 2011. The design industry in the UK is estimated to be worth at least £35.5bn a year. The new sanctions, it is proposed, will cover only the deliberate copying, importing or marketing of designs for commercial gain that have been formally registered with either UK or EU authorities. Such privileged, registered status usually lasts for up to 25 years. The IPO report describes the change as “a significant deterrent effect against deliberate copying that current civil sanctions do not supply”. At present firms have to pursue a civil action against those they allege have infringed their patent rights. The report adds: “The introduction of criminal sanctions for the counterfeiting and piracy of copyright protected [DVDs and films] provides a precedent.” Those found guilty of pirating copyrighted DVDs and films for commercial gain face up to 10 years in prison. A similar maximum sentence level will apply to those deliberately infringing design patents. The report argues that a fake iPhone steals the Apple design “as much as it does the trademark and any copyright existing in applications stored on it. Extending criminal sanctions to designs will reflect the ‘suite’ of theft that has occurred and forms a necessary weapon in the armoury of enforcement authorities.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2013/may/08/counterfeit-goods-criminal-offence

Source code: PharmaSecure goes mobile in battle against fake drugs

Counterfeit drugs affected people in 124 countries in 2011. Among them was India, where 20% of the drugs on the market are fake, according to the World Health Organisation. It’s a global war, hitting the developing world hard, says the Pharmaceutical, a not-for-profit network of the security divisions of 25 big pharma companies. Counterfeit drugs, which are also referred to as substitute or falsified drugs, are a $75bn-200bn market according to estimates by Deloitte. Roger Bate, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, calculates that at least 100,000 people, mainly in poor countries, die annually from fake drugs. Asia has the most confiscations, but data – the bulk of which is withheld by pharma companies and governments – is lacking and statistics are estimated. However, a 29-year-old from New Hampshire has decided to take on this battle from his office in a clock tower building in Gurgaon, in the Indian state of Haryana. Nathan Sigworth and a fellow Dartmouth College graduate, N Taylor Thompson, who has since left, founded PharmaSecure in 2007. Sigworth is now chief executive of the company, which is based in Gurgaon and Lebanon, New Hampshire, and prints unique codes on medicines to enable consumers to verify their validity and potency using their phones. PharmaSecure is not the only company providing medical authentications. Sproxil and Pedigree are also using mobile technology to authenticate drugs, but do not operate on the same scale as PharmaSecure, which will soon be operating beyond India and has produced more than 500bn coded packages. Up to 2m packages are coded every day, says Sigworth.

“Even though we’re churning out so many meds, we are still only saturating 5% of the Indian market. We are now working hard to make this scale,” he says. That means integrating with pharmaceuticals. It’s merely a matter of time, says Sigworth; pharma companies that previously printed codes on only three of their 17 medicines are now authenticating all of them.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/may/09/source-code-pharmasecure-fake-drugs