Many years ago, I was surprised to see seemingly ordinary water guns being sold in the mall in the Philippines. What was surprising was the fact that each pricy gun came with an embossed “USA Patent No. 1234”. I was smiling; had it been in India, in a few days knock offs would be sold at every street corner during holi, at a fraction of the price. That impression is alive even today. Just go to the Fatorda stadium just before an FC Goa football match. You will have atleast 10 men all around the stadium selling knock offs of the official team jersey at a fraction of the price. Welcome to India, the home of piracy. Let me be clear I am not a supporter of piracy. This is not a solution on how to stop piracy. I do not believe it can be stopped as long as there is an economic disparity.
Manufacturers of patented products have to take steps to protect their rights and designs. However because the shady manufacturers indulge in illegal methods, it does not give any rights to legitimate manufacturers to break rules to protect their interests. If they must take action then they can use all the legal methods available to them. I believe the music industry has found a solution to get restaurants, radio stations etc to pay the license fees so that artists benefit from the use of their music.
However this is a long process, remember Kasab, even though everyone knew he was a terrorist, we had to follow the due process of law to finally convict him and execute his sentence. This is because India is a democracy and we have chosen to be so even if it means a lengthy procedure to bring an offender to justice.
Many years ago a direct mailer from the world’s richest man came to me. The mailer went on to say, “Blaise, if you do not want to wear a real pair of handcuffs buy and use only original Microsoft products” This was a classy way of educating users that it was a jail if one was caught using a pirated version of Microsoft. They were telling you what it was, piracy was akin to stealing and just like if you were caught stealing jail is one of the punishments.
Imagine if the manufacturers of the official jerseys were to pick up every user of the fake jersey and threaten them with jail unless they brought an official version of the jersey. It would be unheard of and would actually be an illegal short cut if they did so. Even if they did want to take action they would first have to file a police complaint, then there would have to be an investigation and then the matter would go to court and if finally proved in court, the court would pronounce the sentence. Time consuming but that is the correct way.
There are many brands that allow copied versions to coexist with the official version as a strategy to make the product gain more visibility. They do this so that when the person is in the market for a product he will buy the official version of what he is used too.
There is however a disturbing trend noticed for some time. The brand owner makes an agreement with say a consultancy. The agreement is eyewash. The agreement is “your company” specific. Meaning the brand owner has authorized the consultancy to study the target company’s use of the branded product. The job of this consultancy is to approach the suspect company i.e. company suspected of having unlicensed versions of the branded products. The method used by the consultancy is to pick telephone numbers from an industrial database, they call these numbers and ask for someone in the purchase department. They then identify themselves and being usually reputed names, often the unsuspecting purchaser gives the details asked for along with email ids and names of concerned people. The next thing is an email will arrive in very legal language, referring to the agreement and demanding data on the company’s usage of the branded product in question, so urgent it normally asks for the same by end of day. The email sounds very official and very urgent. The email tries to imply that there was a discussion on the captioned subject and gives a mistaken impression that the consultancy was trying to get a response for many days.
This is a clear breach of privacy. Since the consultancy advises clients on how to adhere to various laws and how to comply it is strange that they have got involved in such an agreement. If, the brand owner feels he knows a company is using unlicensed versions of his product, he should file a police complaint and follow the due process of law. Here, a short cut bordering on extortion is planned. Once the consultancy gets the information, they will advise you to procure the branded product officially failing which they will file a complaint. While I do not endorse piracy, I also do not endorse this arm twisting method. I am sure if a company decides to fight the case in court they will win because their privacy was breached in the first place.
Avoid piracy and ensure your privacy is protected at all costs.
Blaise Costabir is an alumnus of the Asian Institute of Management and a first generation entrepreneur
