In its IP action plan, the European Commission announced that it would establish an EU Toolbox against counterfeiting setting out coherent, effective and coordinated actions against counterfeiting, both online and offline. To prepare this initiative, the European Commission and the EUIPO Observatory have planned a series of targeted workshops with specific interest groups such as social media platforms, the domain name ecosystem, payment services and transport/logistics industries, as well as workshops on horizontal topics such as information sharing and data protection.
The first workshop on social media took place yesterday. The aim of the workshop was to assess the roles and responsibilities of key players in tackling the misuse of social media to promote and sell counterfeit goods. It also provided the opportunity to discuss how to strengthen existing cooperation and increase information and data sharing between all key players within the public and private sectors.
This workshop built on identified trends and good practices on social media from the EUIPO study ‘Monitoring and analysing social media in relation to IP infringement’ (April 2021) and the discussion paper on ‘New and existing trends in using social media for IP infringement activities and good practices to address them’ prepared by the EUIPO Observatory’s Expert Group on Cooperation with Intermediaries (June 2021).
During the workshop participants discussed the challenges posed by the misuse of social media to infringe intellectual property rights (IPR), as well as the good practices, tools and initiatives to tackle such misuse, and concrete ways to support these efforts.
Further targeted workshops will be organised over the coming months. Stay tuned!