The Combating Counterfeit Products Act
Last week, the Government introduced Bill C-56, Combating Counterfeit Products Act. It has two main objectives. First, to protect public safety and health by enacting legislation specifically to target commercial scale trafficking in counterfeit products. Second, to make technical amendments to the Trade-marks Act such as to permit registration of non-traditional trade-marks like sounds, and to improve registration procedures. The Government backgrounder and related FAQs, and other information is available at Industry Canada’s website.
The anti-counterfeiting portion of the legislation addresses recommendations made by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security (May 2007) and Parliamentary Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology (June 2007) to crack down on commercial counterfeiting operations because of the serious health and safety consequences.…