BRUSSELS -- The European Commission will start monitoring some countries to verify their efforts to stem intellectual piracy, the BBC reports.
As the grace period expires for many developing countries to meet minimum international copyright standards (known as TRIPS), the commission will start bringing copyright cases before the World Trade Commission, European Commission Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said Wednesday.
Lamy said the EC plans to monitor China, Ukraine, Russia, Thailand, Brazil, South Korea and Indonesia, with China, where 20 percent of goods sold are fakes, being the "most worrying," Lamy told the BBC.
Countries that aren't trying hard enough to stop intellectual piracy could suffer economic sanctions by the World Trade Organization, Lamy said. But the EC will also provide funding and training to customs officials to help them stop pirated goods exports.
Lamy said that a wide range of counterfeit goods are being produced, from clothing to airplane parts to medicines.
Between 1998-2002, the EC said the amount of counterfeit or pirated goods intercepted at EU borders increased eightfold.
In all, counterfeit or pirated goods account for about 5 percent of world trade, or $258 billion a year.
