On December 16, CLDP will facilitate the third meeting of the Caucasus and Eastern Europe Expert Level Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights (“Working Group”). The goal of the Working Group is to identify mutual challenges for the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights and develop recommendations for regional cooperation between and among the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. The Working Group meeting will be composed of delegates from the Republic of Armenia, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova, and Ukraine. This meeting will focus on shared challenges in identifying and targeting counterfeit goods at borders in the hopes of developing common solutions.  During the meeting, experts from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, React Anti-Counterfeiting Network, and the Alliance Against Counterfeit Spirits will present on best practices in customs’ enforcement of intellectual property rights, effective strategies in private sector engagement on intellectual property rights, and regional challenges in counterfeiting of goods in key sectors.  CLDP will then group discussions on the presentation topics.  The Working Group contributes to the progress of predictable, harmonized, and efficient protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) across the region, while also deepening engagement between participating governments in addressing their shared challenges on IPR issues.

Then on December 18-20, CLDP will hold a three-day capacity building workshop for all country delegations of the Working Group and a wider audience from the Republic of Moldova that will include market inspectors, customs agents, and police officers. The workshop is designed to build the capacity of customs officers and other relevant stakeholders on brand protection and identification of genuine and counterfeit goods of specific brands. Experts will describe security features applied on genuine goods, share methodology on distinguishing genuine goods from counterfeit, and information relevant to targeting of suspect shipments (such as routes of distribution of genuine goods, known routes of supplies of counterfeit goods, means of delivery, ports of origin and destination). Experts will also discuss recent trends in counterfeiting and next steps after the shipment is stopped, such as primary contact for consultations and legal follow up, means of communication.