Based on the existing practice in combating the infringement of IP rights we can offer the following measures.

First of all, the rights holder should pay due attention to protect his/her IP rights in Belarus. E.g. a trademark owner should obtain national registration of trademark or international registration valid in Belarus. If an official distributor imports the goods of rights holder, the latter should empower this distributor to take all necessary protective measures on his/he behalf, in particular to include trademark in the Customs register of intellectual property, to file an application for initiation of administrative and criminal proceeding, etc. As for the cyberspace, rights holder is advised on timely registration of a domain name which includes the designation of his/her trademark.

Secondly, the effectiveness of activity of law enforcement authorities to identify counterfeit goods and bring to trial is determined by consent of rights holder to cooperate. For administrative and criminal proceedings it is highly important that the rights holder applies to law enforcement authorities on his/her own or via his/her representatives (official distributors, lawyers specializing in IP rights protection).

Thirdly, the fight against the production and distribution of counterfeit goods is connected not only with the infringement of IP rights, but also with a number of other offences. In particular, they are an infringement of  state standards and requirements of technical regulations, a violation of the rights of consumers (consumer fraud, the sale of goods of bad quality), an infringement of competitor’s rights (unfair competition). This legislation provides the rights holder with additional means of protection.