Last November, the EUIPO published a report of good practices aimed at providers of electronic payment services in order to avoid or reduce the infringement of Intellectual Property rights.
Online payment service providers have the ability to deal with intellectual property infringers. Or, at the very least, to do a great job identifying and prosecuting eventual offenders. After all, when they participate in the sale of counterfeit products or provide services related to pirated content, they depend, like most operators of digital commercial traffic, on electronic payment services to formalize their illicit activities.
With technological advances, offenders have become more sophisticated in their strategies, making it more difficult to determine the traceability of operations. Among the emerging challenges, experts highlight the following challenges to take on:
- Laundering of transactions
- Identification of IP offenders
- Constant exchange of information with the authorities
In addition, given the special sensitivity of their services, payment service providers are subject to strict regulations to try to avoid fraud, illegal activities, and in particular money laundering. That is why, it is applied to them:
- Customer due diligence requirements, which vary based on risk.
- Internal controls and monitoring systems for customer activities, which also vary according to risk.
- Report suspicious activities to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).
The recommendations that experts make for this type of agent are the following:
From Ponti & Partners we want to encourage all payment service providers to follow, as much as possible the recommendations that EUIPO gives, taking advantage of the strategic situation we find ourselves right now, with the aim of identifying and blocking the activity of intellectual property infringers.
For more information, do not hesitate to contact us via email ponti@ponti.pro or by phone at 934 874 936.
