With this year’s World Anti-Counterfeiting Day and the annual UK Trading Standards Conference fast approaching, it seems only appropriate to make reference to intellectual property (IP) crime in Northern Ireland, where the fight to combat it is being waged perhaps most proactively by the law enforcement authorities. IP crime, adopting the meaning attributed to it by the Northern Ireland Organised Crime Task Force (OCTF), encompasses “illegally copied goods, manufactured and sold for profit without the consent of the trademark or copyright owner”. Such crime inevitably contributes to and supports the so-called ‘black economy’.
Given the pervasive influence of paramilitarism throughout much of Northern Ireland society, it is perhaps not surprising that the position in Northern Ireland is markedly different from the rest of the UK, reflected in the necessity for the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) to take the lead responsibility in tackling IP crime, as opposed to Trading Standards.
