Hodgson Pete: Trade Marks (International Treaties and Enforcement) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Hodgson Pete: Trade Marks (International Treaties and Enforcement) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:675;Page:21017] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 I would like to acknowledge the accuracy of the remarks of the Minister of Commerce but regret they were not delivered with more passion. The main challenge facing the Committee this evening is to not fall asleep. 
The Trade Marks (International Treaties and Enforcement) Amendment bill is important. It is important legislation but it is in the eyes of many not as interesting as watching paint dry as the saying goes. The reason it is important—well all of the legislation is important—is that we are talking to Part 1 which is about trademarks. The legislation by the way was introduced under the previous Government and I do not know whether I introduced it; it might have been Lianne Dalziel. I cannot remember. Is she here? She is not. One of us introduced it it went off to a select committee and it took 3 years to come back. But there you go! 
The short of it is that we need to update our trademarks legislation simply because it is a bit of a moving feast. We need to keep up with changes in international treaties etc. In the case of trademarks I am just trying to remember the names of the treaties. I think it is the Protocol Relating to the Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks (Madrid Protocol). Is it not the Singapore Treaty on the Law of Trademarks as well? 
Dr Paul Hutchison 
: Yep that’s right. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: It is? Oh well good on me. So the Madrid Protocol and the Singapore treaty make up the international trademark registration system. If I am correct the role of the Singapore treaty is to reduce some of the compliance costs and make things a little simpler for trademark registration offshore. It is for the defence of trademarks offshore for indeed there is no point in having one’s trademark well known if it is going to be dicked over by some counterfeiter in an offshore market. But we will get to the idea of the importance of strengthened enforcement in due course. 
For the moment we say to the Government straightforwardly that we will be voting in favour of this legislation and that we will be seeing its passage through this House in a timely but not necessarily speedy manner. My instructions are yet to arrive in that regard— 
Clare Curran 
: Keep going. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: Keep going? But we do know that unless trademarks legislation is maintained to be roughly consistent with the legislation where international conventions treaties and agreements get to then sooner or later law falls behind practice. We are of course following these treaties already; it is in the nature of the beast that they are agreed to by parties that they are put into place and that the law follows rather than the other way round as I understand it. None the less failure to keep up with the changes by laws means that a certain amount of dissonance arises between what is practice and what is New Zealand law. 
I will now get to some detail. We have changed the powers of the police. I think that what we have done with the cops is that we have said in new section 134X inserted by clause 17—this is a very large piece of legislation; it runs to about 80 pages—that the police have all of the powers that are currently accorded people like customs officers. I see that the officials are looking at me in a bemused sort of a way which is what officials do when they disagree. But I think the police have been given the powers to exercise all of the rights that customs officers have. In other words we have a standing army that is made bigger by this legislation when it comes to the point of enforcing trademark miscreant behaviour. 
Dr Paul Hutchison 
: How long has he got to go? 
Jonathan Young 
: Too long. 
Dr Paul Hutchison 
: 3½ weeks. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: Three and a half weeks to go—no problems! So that is helpful because it means that we will have more people able to do the enforcing. 
It is a matter of fact that the Ministry of Economic Development which is responsible for this legislation is also responsible for a thing called the regulatory impact statement. There is a little rule in this little country which is that when we have a piece of legislation we have to add to the back of it the regulatory impact statement. The Ministry of Economic Development folk go around and they beat up on other departments for having insufficient or inadequate regulatory impact statements. And they do it rather well in a jocular and pleasant way and they offer to assist other agencies to make sure their regulatory impact statements are up to scratch. The reason for having regulatory impact statements is that we—ordinary members of the public here representing the people of New Zealand—are able to work out whether this legislation is in a regulatory sense a bit of an impost. That is very very important to the ACT Party because that party does not like heavy-handed regulation and it is committed to getting rid of heavy-handed regulation but so far it has made precisely no progress. It does not matter however because the regulatory impact statements are part and parcel of our legislation these days. 
So when we have a regulatory impact statement that has been written by the authors of the standards of regulatory impact statements the question is how good they are at meeting their own standards. Answer—pretty damn good! I had a good old look at that regulatory impact statement and looked at the options about doing it this way or doing it that way. There is a certain formulaic way in which they have put it together because that is what officials do but I would just like to note in passing that the Ministry of Economic Development has managed to put together a reasonable regulatory impact statement; I have seen a lot worse. So I say good on the ministry and I wish it well. 
There are apparently some Supplementary Order Papers in respect of Part 1. I do not quite know what they do but when I sit down I shall read them and see whether I can work it out. I see they are about commencement clauses and so forth. One is completely nonsensical to me but I will try to work it out. I therefore intend to resume my seat presently and I hope that we will be able to hear further from members on the Government benches especially from Dr Paul Hutchison known affectionately as “Dr Paul” which is why I said that in a low voice. We hope that he might be able to get to his feet and tell us a little more about trademarks so that we can all be engrossed by the matter.