Protecting Your Intellectual Property Rights: Understanding the Role of Management, Governments, Consumers and Pirates

Counterfeit products represent a growing problem for a wide range of industries. There are many estimates of the size of this problem most of which coalesce around $500-billion annually on a global basis. Overall, a wide range of industries agree that there is a severe problem with the global protection of intellectual property rights (IPR), yet, there have been virtually no attempts to describe all aspects of the problem. This book aims at giving the most complete description of various characteristics of the intellectual property rights (IPR) environment in a global context. The authors believe a holistic understanding of the problem must include consumer complicity to purchase counterfeit, actions of the counterfeiters (pirates) as well as actions (or inaction) by home and host governments, and the role of international organizations and industry alliances. Only after establishing how all the actors in the IPR environment relate to one another can we describe global protection of the intellectual property rights environment and the managerial response of IPR owners and/or industry associations to combat this ongoing problem. The book concludes with pragmatic recommendations for protecting intellectual property given the recent trends discussed in the previous chapters, making it of interest to practitioners and policy-makers alike.

Dr. Peggy E. Chaudhry is an Associate Professor of International Business at the Villanova School of Business, Villanova University, Villanova, Pennsylvania. She received her Ph.D. in International Business with minors in International Economics and Marketing at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She is considered an expert in intellectual property, illicit trade issues (particularly, counterfeit/gray markets and distribution channels), and international business management. Her research interests include managerial tactics to curb counterfeit trade, consumer complicity with counterfeit goods, and gray markets for consumer goods, including impacts for the pharmaceutical industry. She currently serves on the Editorial Board of Business Horizons and has published articles in the areas of intellectual property rights in business trade publications, such as Advertising Age and The Wall Street Journal. Her academic research has appeared in many journal outlets such as Advances in International Marketing, Business Horizons, Columbia Journal of World Business, Enterprise Information Systems, European Management Journal, Journal of Business Strategy, Journal of Business & Technology Law, Journal of International Marketing, Multinational Business Review, and Virginia Journal of International Law. In 2009, she published her first book (with Alan Zimmerman), The Economics of Counterfeit Trade: Governments, Consumers, Pirates and Intellectual Property Rights. She has been invited to speak before various audiences on the topic of the protection of intellectual property rights and consumer complicity with counterfeit goods including the US International Trade Commission and the University of Maryland’s Francis King Carey School of Law. She was also interviewed by The Wall Street Journal for her views of the growth in counterfeit trade.

Dr. Alan S. Zimmerman is Professor of International Business and Marketing at City University of New York, College of Staten Island, Director of the International Business Program and Advisor to the International Business Society. Zimmerman is a two-time Fulbright Scholar and three-time president of the New Jersey American Marketing Association Chapter. In January 2011 he taught at the Shanghai Institute of Language and Commerce in the People's Republic of China, his fourth visit to that country. He is also the founder and president of three businesses including Radley Resources, a business to business market research and consulting practice. The firm's extensive list of clients includes American Express, DuPont, Owens-Corning and Armstrong World Industries. He worked for more than 30 years in international and domestic marketing with the consultancy and with Westinghouse Electric Corporation. He served as vice president of marketing for E.F. Hauserman, a $100-million interior wall manufacturer. He is a frequent speaker and author on international business and marketing. His text book, Business Marketing Management: a Global Perspective, written with UK professor Jim Blythe, and now in its second edition, is being used by colleges around the world. His academic research has appeared in many journals including Business Horizons, Multinational Business Review, Science and Engineering Ethics, Journal of Asia Pacific Business, Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing and the Journal of Global Marketing. He holds a doctorate in international business and marketing from the Lubin School of Business at Pace University, New York, an MBA from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and a BS in Communications from Temple University in Philadelphia. In January 2010, he spent three weeks in India on a second Fulbright award, lecturing in Delhi and rural Rajistan. In 2005, he held a semester-long Fulbright assignment at the Dublin Institute of Technology, with whom CSI has an established exchange program.