HABERLER

The Anti-Infringement Bureau for IP Rights on Plant Material (AIB) has been presented with the 2016 award for Outstanding Public and Private Partnership in the Fight against Intellectual Property Piracy.

The Anti-Infringement Bureau for IP Rights on Plant Material (AIB) has been presented with the 2016 award for Outstanding Public and Private Partnership in the Fight against Intellectual Property Piracy, handed out annually by the International Intellectual Property Crime Investigators College (IIPCIC) operated under INTERPOL and Underwriters Laboratories (UL). It was collected by the Managing Director Casper van Kempen at the 10^th Interpol/UL IP Crime Conference in London last September.

Intellectual property is an essential requirement for any industrial activity, but even more so in the vegetable seed industry. This reason made grow the interest to find synergies between the companies in the sector who pushed to create in 2009 the AIB, which Semillas Fitó is a founding member and whose mission is to prevent piracy and to pursue illegal activities.

Today we can say that they have made great achievements after these years of experience, including getting the strong involvement of public institutions in the fight for intellectual property showing a close collaboration in the developing strategic plans to prevent these illegal practices, or the educational plans focused to give the knowledge both law enforcement agents and seed companies’ field staff on the importance of IPR protection and how to detect illegal activities.

Although there is still a lot of distance to go, we can say we are proud to have participated with our small contribution to this important recognition that means a great success for all of us.