National Human Trafficking Awareness Month

The topic of human trafficking is incredibly important to me. The reality of this issue came into my own life when I visited Thailand a few years back and visited a girls’ orphanage. These girls’ parents had been killed and they had been hiding in the jungle. If another group had found them, they’d likely have been sold into slavery. Playing with them, hugging them, giving them stickers about love and friendship, and envisioning where they might be otherwise both blessed and haunted me.

When I lived in New York, I would wander around Chinatown, wondering what was happening behind hidden doors and boarded-up windows. The city was just starting to crack down on this issue when I arrived, and while I was there, there were several busts right there in my city. Usually the cops were seizing knockoffs, but there is a darker story behind those fake goods.

I feel somewhat powerless against so many issues in the world today, and being “aware” doesn’t always give me practical ideas of how to combat whatever the issue is. Human Trafficking is something we all can fight against practically and intentionally.

The following post is from attorney Cheryl Hodgson, and is reposted with her kind permission. I urge you to share this information.

On January 11, 2010, National Human Trafficking Awareness Month was launched across the U.S. Human Trafficking involves all sort of horrible mistreatment of children, some abuses too difficult to even speak of, much less imagine. Did you ever wonder who makes those “cheap” Gucci knockoffs? Those DKNY items on street corners? Many of them may well have involved child labor, some of them akin to slavery.

During a recent chat with a friend deeply involved in raising awareness of Human Trafficking through www.intent.com, I offered to share how Intellectual Property theft is tied to the human trafficking by sophisticated criminals. My goal is that this piece forever serves as reminder to those of us who have been tempted by those inexpensive, counterfeit luxury hand bags or watchs. We are all aware of the issue, but until more informed, tend to think in terms of the big brand owner who is upset about loss of rights and profits. “So what’s the big deal?” Read this, and I hope you will think again before you buy.

I am an Intellectual Property attorney who has worked passionately in the field of trademarks and copyrights for many years. Even I was completely sobered and sickened by a story I heard at U.S. Trademark Office program here in Santa Monica a few years back. An American attorney based in Thailand spoke of his law firm’s involvement in verifying fake goods seized by Thai custom officials. This type of cooperation is a rather recent side cooperative effort, resulting more from terrorist concerns since 09-11 than a real concern about protecting luxury goods trademark owners. Discovery of the fake goods is a rather random event, since custom officials are routine bribed to “look the other way.”

Imagine a horrible unsafe, unsanitary warehouse containing $20 million in state of the art cigarette manufacturing equipment used to make fake cigarettes. Imagine criminals who have recruited unsuspecting youngsters to travel from China and beyond to “job fairs” seeking a better life. The innocent girls are sold into sexual slavery, and young men are chained to machines like the one in the cigarette plant, forced to do the work of criminal enterprise. In this case, a raid of the plant found the owners long gone, tipped off in advance by custom officials in Bangkok. All that remained were the young male teenagers, chained to the machines to which they were slaves.

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Cheryl Hodgson presently serves as a member of the Emerging Issues Committee of the International Trademark Association, and Past President of the California Copyright conference. She practices law in Santa Monica, CA and Cheryl can be reached at www.hodgson-law.com. Cheryl posts regularly at the BRANDAIDE Blog. www.brandaideblog.com