MANILA, Philippines - As the crackdown on counterfeit goods continues to intensify, the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines sees the value of confiscated pirated goods doubling to more than P6 billion this year.

IP Philippines Director General Adrian Cristobal Jr. said the National Committee on Intellectual Property Rights (NCIPR), of which IP Philippines was a member-agency, had seized some P4.3 billion in counterfeit goods as of October.

Cristobal said that the rate the agency was going, it could double this year the record last year.

He said the increase in the value of seized goods was not just a result of the government’s intensified campaign to stop piracy in the country, but also of higher private sector participation.

“Unless intellectual property owners file a case, there’s no case [that we can go from]. IP owners are now more active in protecting their IP, their brands. I think that’s a sign of their confidence in the Philippine IP system,” he said.

As of the first half, the NCIPR had seized close to P3.4 billion worth of various types of counterfeit goods and paraphernalia, including three video-replicating machines worth a total of P200 million, which the Bureau of Customs and the Optical Media Board seized in an operation in May.

Confiscated goods in the first half also included more than P11 million worth of fake products, including Unilever products. These were confiscated by the Intellectual Property Unit of the National Bureau of Investigation.

The amount of goods seized in the first semester alone almost surpassed the P3.5 billion record last year.

Cristobal said the recent submission to the Supreme Court of special rules on IP rights litigation in courts would further help boost the enforcement of IP laws in the country.

The new set of rules aimed to expedite the resolution of IPR cases, which usually took at least six years to resolve, he said.

Under the proposed special rules, he said selected commercial courts in the National Capital Region—including those in Makati, Manila, Quezon City, Pasig and Mandaluyong—would be designated as Special IP Courts with national jurisdiction.

Boosting the volume of IP cases filed in these courts should help develop judges’ expertise in IP cases, thus resulting in faster litigation.

Instead of going through all the motions and procedures associated with regular cases, the proposed special rules sought to do away with certain aspects of the general rules of procedure that were irrelevant or inapplicable to IP cases.

The proposed rules also allowed IP courts to immediately order the destruction of seized counterfeit goods upon presentation of motion and evidence.