What has happened?

The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has launched a new forum based on blockchain to combat counterfeiting.

What does this mean?

The Anti-Counterfeiting Blockathon Forum will be built on blockchain technology and will bring together people and organisations to shape and deliver the future anti-counterfeiting infrastructure.

It follows last year’s Blockathon coding competition, which was run by the EUIPO and the European Commission, and is linked to the EU Blockchain Observatory.

The Forum will connect private organisations, enforcement authorities and citizens to support the identification of authentic and counterfeit goods throughout the distribution chain.

It will focus on drafting and defining the anti-counterfeiting use case and related pilot with the ultimate goal of delivering the next level of anti-counterfeiting infrastructure based on blockchain.

The Executive Director of the EUIPO, Christian Archambeau, called on private sector organisations, and all interested individuals to join the anti-counterfeiting forum to help develop and test solutions that would successfully combat the “global plague” of counterfeiting.

“In today’s fast moving world, we need to use the latest technology to keep a reliable record of the origin of goods and their progress through international supply chains. Blockchain’s ability to create permanent and unchangeable records makes it one of the best candidates to deliver results on the ground”, he added.

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