Buried in a story on the launch of 'Turn Back Crime' (here) - a initiative of Interpol’s Indonesia National Central Bureau against organised crime - is a little treasure. It's the number of IP cases investigated by the National Police in 2013, which the Jakarta Post reports is 589.
It's a rare thing to see a hard performance number from the National Police, which does not systematically publish statistics. Despite operating on a much smaller scale with around 50 raids each year, the DGIP's (Directorate-General of Intellectual Property) PPNS (civil enforcement officers) does, and is often praised for its transparency and accountability.
Now we have confirmation that the National Police have been handling a heavy caseload. 589 is an impressive number for 2013 - that's around fifty cases each month. It's a realistic number too, considering there are four levels of police authority that can act on IP complaints - MABES (national police); POLDA (regional police); POLSEC (sector police); and POLRES (resort police) - anywhere in the country.
Interpol's 'Turn Back Crime' is supposed to be (in part at least) an anti-counterfeiting initiative. But, based on the Jakarta Post story, the initiative appears to essentially be a PR campaign to discourage consumers from buying counterfeit product. This in itself may have a negligible impact. But 50 police raids a month will - hopefully this number can be formalised and counted as part of Indonesia's IP enforcement efforts. The United States Trade Representative, for example, would find this very interesting for the purposes of its Special 301 report (see our post on the Special 301 report here).