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:21026] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 Part 2 is to copyright what Part 1 was to trademark. In any case it is intellectual property regulation—it is IPR—it is how we ensure that innovations that derive from our fair shores can make it across and that we can export those innovations and protect them. It also means that we are protecting the New Zealand consumer from counterfeit goods arriving on our shores from somewhere else. 
Let me give the Committee a couple of examples so that we can now begin to understand the strident import of this sort of legislation. The first example I offer up will be the golden kiwifruit which has a trademark called Zespri. It has a bunch of intellectual property around it that one can buy and sell—in fact that has been bought and sold in the last 10 years—and that needs to be protected. If one goes to Italy one will see Zespri Gold being grown there. If one goes to an island off the mainland of South Korea one will see quite a lot of Zespri Gold being grown there. Some Zespri Gold is also being grown in South America but all of it has to be branded—whether that is by a copyright trademark or whatever other type of intellectual property protection it enjoys—in a way that consumers can believe they are buying the real thing. 
What is more Zespri set aside a certain proportion of its budget to defend a certain proportion of the counterfeits that come along. In this case the counterfeit is in the form of plant material that is derived from sources other than New Zealand. The end result is that the kiwifruit industry is able to extract a premium because it controls not only those who grow the stuff but also the science of it and really importantly its quality. That is why the industry wants to protect its trademark or copyright to the extent that it does. 
A more serious example concerns pharmaceuticals. The reason it is more serious is that a pharmaceutical will be counterfeit not only in the sense that Johnson and Johnson might be getting done in the eye—you know being put out of pocket by someone who is selling one of that company’s products in a counterfeit manner—but also in the sense that its bioactivity might be different. At that point human health and safety come into play and that is why the management of counterfeit pharmaceuticals—we are not talking here of generic pharmaceuticals; that is not what I am talking about at all—is really important. The World Health Organization estimates that 10 percent of pharmaceuticals are counterfeit and they are largely sold and traded in Third World nations but not entirely so. 
In New Zealand we have to maintain a level of vigilance which we do through Medsafe and other organisations including the Pharmacovigilance Centre that happens to operate out of the very fine electorate of Dunedin North which I have the privilege of representing. We maintain an eye on that stuff—a very very close eye. It is actually very close to a closed system notwithstanding the internet and people being able to buy and sell as they will in small quantities. So the idea of getting on top of any counterfeit pharmaceuticals becomes terribly important because that deals much more with human health and safety as well as the loss of cash. Those are a couple of examples then when it becomes immediately apparent that intellectual property rights are of consequence. 
I will make one other comment before I resume my seat. The use of intellectual property rights in New Zealand is growing reliably and quite encouragingly off a really really low base. This goes back to an old saw about how New Zealand science is good but how the New Zealand commercialisation ability of science is not good. That has gone on as an argument or debate for yonks so I shall not go on about that. But I will make the point that more and more New Zealand innovators—he said broadly—are realising the importance of getting good intellectual property rights.