Anti-Counterfeit Friday

This is the second post in Afro-IP's ACF campaign designed to increase awareness of the problem in Africa.

Ghana: Hewlett Packard has announced a significant local seizure of counterfeit printing supplies destined for HP printers. The company supported Ghanaian law enforcement officials who confiscated nearly 1,100 illegal items in a highly coordinated strike. Over the last four years, HP has assisted in the seizure of nearly nine million pieces of fake printing supplies products and components in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. (GhanaWeb)

"If there is one thing that we all recognize, it is that intellectual property crime is a problem of global dimension," said U.S. Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer in late September at the 2011 International Law Enforcement Intellectual Property Crime Conference. Voanews

East Africa: The Ugandan Daily Monitor reports that the National Drug Authority warned that counterfeit antiretroviral drugs – used to manage HIV infections – could find their way into the Ugandan market. The authority's Executive Secretary warned that the World Health Organisation had already found counterfeit Zidolam-N drugs on the Kenyan market.People living with HIV/Aids who take counterfeit antiretroviral drugs could suffer diminished immunity or develop resistance to the genuine drugs.

Each year more than half a million people worldwide die while using bad drugs to treat malaria and tuberculosis alone. Now a group of start-up companies, including Sproxil, is offering consumers a more reliable way to make sure their pills are genuine. The new method relies on two technologies that are ubiquitous in the third world: text messaging and scratch-off labels. Nigeria has reported some successes using the technologies. (New York Times) “For tuberculosis and malaria alone, up to 700,000 people die every year due to fake products,’’ he said. “That’s four jumbo jets full of people dying every day.’’ (Boston Globe reporting on the same development)

Tanzania: In a bid to decrease the counterfeit imports in the country, the government will start linking local traders to Chinese supplier who produce genuine goods. According to the article traders in the country do not know when they are dealing with rogue traders and the government initiative is designed to reduce this risk. (The Citizen)