Tiktok joins PH government’s growing army vs counterfeiters

The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) has inducted social media giant TikTok into its e-commerce initiative with private enterprises to curb counterfeit and piracy online, expanding its private sector partners in combating this billion-peso illicit trade.

The IPOPHL on Wednesday said that it had expanded its e-commerce memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the addition of the video-focused social media and social networking service owned by Chinese firm ByteDance.

Influencer marketing boom

Two pharmaceutical firms, Quadgen Pharmaceutical and Greenstone Pharmaceutical HK, Inc., have also been added to the public-private sector agreement.“We hope that signing this MOU marks the beginning of a dynamic and enduring partnership. You become one with us, as well as the other signatories, in our commitment to enforce (intellectual property) rights especially in the digital space,” IPOPHL director General Rowel Barba said in a statement.

Barba said they saw TikTok’s online marketplace, the TikTok Shop as critical amid the influencer marketing boom in the Philippines.

At present, the MOU has 34 signatories, including four e-commerce platforms such as Shopee and Lazada, 24 brand owners and six chambers of commerce and industry associations.From January to September, IPOPHL’s data showed that at least P23.03 billion worth of pirated goods had been seized by authorities, an amount that is likely undervalued given the difficulty of tracing pirated goods sold online.

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This haul during the nine-month period marked more than a two-fold increase in the value of these contrabands confiscated yearly in the country.

To respond to this increasing trend, the IPOPHL said that it was looking to expand its monitoring and investigating team working on piracy and counterfeiting cases. INQ