IPOPHL to Increase Manpower and Improve Fight Against Counterfeiting and Piracy
The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) seeks to boost its piracy and counterfeiting monitoring and investigating team as illegal trades have upsurged by a third in 2023.
According to IPOPHL Director General Rowel Barba, their office received about 300 reports in 2023, which shows a 50% increase from the 200 reports in the previous year.
Barba noted, “We can attribute (the increase) to Filipinos becoming more aware now. They can report counterfeiting and piracy.”
Cases of forgery of products such as shoes, bags, and apparel still exceeded piracy cases or the authorized selling and copying of music, movies, and e-books.
IPOPHL is now expanding its capacity to pursue pirates and counterfeiters in light of the recent completion of regulations prohibiting internet access to websites that support these kinds of operations.
Barba cited, “This is because we are expecting that there will be a flood of complaints.”
According to statistics from the IPOPHL, officials confiscated commodities worth at least ₱23.03 billion between January and September, which caused the value of these contrabands to climb by more than two times.
This is accumulated in the nine-month collective haul by the National Bureau of Investigation, Philippine National Police, Bureau of Customs, and Food and Drug Administration.
