STATEMENT
by participants in the meeting on the development of a national program
to protect the consumer market from counterfeit goods

We, representatives of brand and copyright holders, government entities and non-governmental organizations protecting these rights, industry business unions and public associations of consumers, in expressing our common belief that the scale of the spread of counterfeit and false goods on the Russian market and the size of damage inflicted by them jeopardize not only rights holders and consumers, but also Russia’s economic development, public morals and international prestige, hereby state the following:

1. It is impossible to resolve the problem of protecting the consumer market from counterfeit products by means of occasional efforts by law-enforcement agencies and individual rights owners. Based on a national program, it is necessary to join the forces of businesses, various government bodies and consumer organizations. The program’s goal should be to reduce the amount of counterfeit goods on the Russian market to the “natural level” typical of the EU consumer market.

2. Rights holders should be the driving force for developing and implementing such a program. First, by joint efforts they can ensure total control over the authenticity of the products sold on the consumer market, and second, they can prompt distributors to stop selling counterfeit goods.

3. In order to ensure highly effective market control over the authenticity of goods, it is necessary that first, efforts and funds invested by rights holders in it be in line with the scale of the spread of counterfeit goods, and second, that the requirement to apply sanctions prescribed by legislation be guaranteed. The latter requires effective (well-motivated, competent and efficiently organized) cooperation between all levels of the mechanism to detect and preclude counterfeit products and penalize violators: mobile market control groups, police, economic crimes departments, prosecutors’ offices and the courts.

4. Rights holders should support and encourage retail and service outlets that guarantee the legality of all products they sell. In connection with this, we favor the program initiated by the Union of Consumer Market Participants that calls for voluntary declaration by resellers that they have no counterfeit goods (“counterfeit-free zones”) and are ready to cooperate with the Union of Consumer Market Participants in order to oversee the fulfillment by its members of obligations they have assumed, and together develop an encouragement mechanism for its bona fide members.

5. In order to ensure effective protection of the consumer market against counterfeit goods it is also important to provide the following:

   • legal support for rights holders, including legally clean registration of their rights and the expedient resolution of disagreement between them;
   • the possibility for the unambiguous identification of goods, using technical regulations and national standards;
   • regular training, experience-sharing and motivation for the best employees and divisions of law enforcement agencies;
   • training and certification of civilian supervisors — public inspectors of the Federal Service for Supervision of the Protection of Consumer Rights and Human Welfare;
   • massive educational campaign for consumers, aimed at identifying negative personal and public consequences of the spread of counterfeit goods and explaining available ways to detect them.

6. The rights holders participating in the meeting are ready and appeal for other interested rights holders to jointly form, first in larger and then in all Russian regions, unified, mobile market control groups that utilize their own specialized supervision services and/or in accordance with agreements with local security service organizations recommended by regional Main Departments of Internal Affairs. A fixed percentage of counterfeiting-related damages covered by violators may be used for financing mobile market control groups.

   Representatives of law enforcement agencies participating in the meeting are ready to develop and introduce a number of measures to ensure effective cooperation with rights holders’ supervision units.

7. We are ready to participate in negotiations and multilateral meetings initiated by the organizers of this meeting — the Union of Consumer Market Participants and Rusbrand. The goal of future meetings will be the rapid development of a national program for the protection of the consumer market from counterfeit goods.