Shearer David: Trade Marks (International Treaties and Enforcement) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Shearer David: Trade Marks (International Treaties and Enforcement) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 Mr Chair— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Ooh ooh! Why don’t you just let her finish? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! 
DAVID SHEARER 
: Thank you Mr Chair. With anticipation of those noises Tau Henare— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Why didn’t you just let her finish? 
DAVID SHEARER 
: She did she was. She wanted to announce the news about the Otago strip and then she wanted to sit down. That was the climax. Her piece was coming to that climax. I will talk about— 
Hon Rodney Hide 
: The Labour Party knows nothing about climax. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: Let us not go there. I will talk about enforcement. A lot of Part 2 of the Trade Marks (International Treaties and Enforcement) Amendment Bill is about the powers of enforcement in the bill—in particular the powers of enforcement of customs officials in being able to ensure that the trademark and copyright parts of this bill are upheld. Obviously with the growing problem of the manufacture distribution and sale of counterfeits we are seeing a steady stream of these goods coming into New Zealand. Pete Hodgson mentioned the number—more than 500000 I think—of goods in 2007. Clearly the flood of these fakes effectively undermines the profitability of businesses dealing in the genuine article—that is as Steve Chadwick talked about our own goods themselves. Our Maori artefacts for example are sometimes manufactured overseas and are sold as the real thing when in fact they are not at all. 
New Zealand’s international obligations require us to include a criminal offence for cases of wilful counterfeiting piracy or commercial sale. The penalty for a person convicted of that is a fine of $150000 or imprisonment of up to 5 years so it is quite a serious thing to be caught for. The bill will empower the Ministry of Economic Development and the Customs Service to play an active role in enforcing those criminal offences under the Trade Marks Act and the Copyright Act alongside the cooperation with other enforcement agencies and rights-holders. 
If we look at clause 31 of Part 2—we are looking at the enforcement officer’s power of entry—we see that the powers are quite widespread. When I look at new section 134E I see it is entitled: “What enforcement officer and person assisting may do when exercising power of entry”—in this case an examination—“and examination without warrant”. So these are the powers they can apply without a warrant. Enforcement officers can examine the place and all things including any document; seize anything that he or she has reasonable grounds to believe is evidence; bring and use in or on the place equipment for the purposes of carrying out the examination; take photographs sound or video recordings; or take any person to the place to assist him or her with the examination. In other words they are quite wide-ranging powers that these officials have in trying to combat the infringements of both trademarks and copyright. 
I wanted to highlight that because the places where enforcement officers can carry this out without a warrant include mainly public places. New section 134D(1) is about an enforcement officer’s power of entry and examination without warrant for the purpose of carrying out his or her functions and it says that an enforcement officer may enter and examine any place where goods are being offered for sale exposed for sale or publicly displayed in a public place. An enforcement officer can do that and go into that under this new legislation without the need for a warrant. So it certainly extends the powers of these enforcements officers the people able to do this quite considerably. 
This is extremely important because when I was glancing through some of the past work on this I saw that there were no prosecutions as I understand in 2002 under the Trade Marks Act. Customs officials say they are determined to make a public example of importers of patented goods.