The U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) recently announced that it will be holding a regional conference in Bangkok, Thailand, with an emphasis on international intellectual property crimes. As noted in the USPTO link below, the Department of Justice is gathering police and customs officials from the U.S. and a number of countries, including, China, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, and others for a week long conference hosted in part by the DOJ, the USPTO, the U.S. Department of State, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (“ASEAN”). One of the purposes of the conference, as noted in the link below, is to “enhance cross-border cooperation in the fight against IP theft through the establishment of an Intellectual Property Crimes Enforcement Network (IPCEN).” According to James Finch, the Assistant Director of the Cyber Division of the FBI, “Counterfeit products not only result in harm to world economies, but also represent a serious threat to the health and safety of the people of all nations,” and that the FBI is “fully committed to the IPCEN’s collaborative approach to combating serious intellectual property crimes.” Additional details regarding this conference, as well as hyperlinks to information on the DOJ’s Task Force on Intellectual Property, are available at the link below.

Department of Justice Conference Announcement: LINK