Philippines slashes, smushes haul of pirated goods

[July 01, 2011]  MANILA, Philippines (AP) -- Police slashed fake Louis Vuitton bags and drove armored vehicles over Oakley sunglasses and pirated DVDs Thursday to mark World Anti-Counterfeit Day -- a first step in destroying a five-month haul of counterfeit goods.

The symbolic destruction at police headquarters in Manila involved a portion of the items seized from January through May and the rest will be destroyed later, Intellectual Property Office Philippines head Ricardo Blancaflor said.

The entire haul would be worth $39.4 million if the items were authentic, he said. The street value of such fakes is far less.

"This is only the tip of the iceberg and we intend to do this regularly," Blancaflor said.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimated that international trade in counterfeit and pirated goods in 2007 may have amounted to as much as $250 billion, or around 2 percent of global merchandise trade.

The Philippines is on a U.S. list of intellectual property rights violators.

A similar amount of faked goods were destroyed in the Philippines in February.

[Associated Press]

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