Patricia Campbell, Maryland Carey Law Professor and Director of the Intellectual Property Law Program, published Debugging the Trademark Laws: The Lanham Act and Counterfeit Microelectronics in the Texas Intellectual Property Law Journal (June 2023). Illicit electronic parts not only endanger human lives, but they also inflict significant economic harm and can jeopardize national security. The potential for further harm increases daily as counterfeiters are allowed to sell their goods in the open market with near impunity. In the article, Campbell argues for amending the Lanham Act to empower trademark holders to better pursue actions, not only against counterfeiters themselves, but also the e-commerce platforms that knowingly enable them to sell their products. Campbell proposes that amending the Lanham Act for to provide new tools for trademark holders will not only protect intellectual property rights but will also protect the public interest.
Campbell’s recent work has centered on the problem of counterfeiting since her collaboration with the University of Maryland, College Park’s Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE, part of the A. James Clark School of Engineering) to produce a report for the U.S. Department of Defense and its Defense Microelectronics Activity (DMEA) on the laws, regulations, and policies relating to mitigation of counterfeit electronics in the DoD supply chain. While this article focuses on civil remedies to combat counterfeiting, Campbell’s forthcoming companion article, Debugging the Trademark Laws II: Criminal Penalties for Trafficking in Counterfeit Microelectronics, will provide similar treatment to the criminal side of counterfeiting.
The full article can be found at the link below.