Global Piracy Brings New Brand of Sleuth : Trade: Investigators tell of flexible methods used to track intellectual-property crime, which accounts for 6% of world’s volume.

Private investigators of the 1990s--far removed from the traditional trench-coat-clad sleuths tracking marital indiscretions, have found a new line of business--the fight against intellectual-property crime.

So-called intellectual-property enforcement is a response to the upsurge in brand counterfeiting, copyright piracy and illegal importing that market liberalization and cheaper manufacturing methods have made much easier.

Together, the various forms of intellectual-property (IP) crime are now estimated to make up 6% of all world trade.

Moreover, the latest wave of IP crime is not just about faking trendy T-shirts and sneakers. A potentially fatal trade in bogus pharmaceuticals, automotive and even aircraft components are where the real profits are often found.

At the same time, most of the world’s legal authorities appear ill-equipped--or unwilling--to stamp it out.

This is where private investigators, with their more flexible methods, come in.

Investigation firm MRH Partnership, whose services were used in some of the British takeover battles of the 1980s, is one of a handful of firms now working in intellectual property.

MRH partner Duncan Mee said his first IP enforcement case was a large European drug company which had found out that a hospital in the former Czechoslovakia was being supplied cheap versions of its best-selling post-operative drug.

Locating the Dutch trading company making the shipments was easy enough. But Mee’s client wanted to know who was actually manufacturing the drugs.

With the Dutch authorities showing no interest in the case, he set about tracking the source using a classic investigation technique--checking each night’s garbage from Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport for shipment notes.

On the tenth day of searching, Mee and a colleague found a torn-up note indicating the same, peculiar storage conditions needed for the drug and the name of the Israeli company that had sent the shipment.

That, it turned out, was what the client needed. Mee was not told what action was then pursued but believes that, as often is the case, the client was content with an out-of-court settlement.

Mee insists methods such as garbage-searching--or “garbology” as some call it--are carried out strictly within the laws of the country involved. “Our clients are mainly blue-chips. They wouldn’t like it if we were caught doing something illegal.”

Other common methods for catching the IP criminal include “trap-buying”--posing as a potential customer for bogus goods.

Infiltrating a company by becoming an employee can also work well, particularly in catching users of pirated computer software, one of the most frequent license abuses.

But even when hard evidence of counterfeiting or patent abuse is unearthed, getting a meaningful prosecution for such crimes remains unusually difficult.

“The courts are still giving out pathetic sentences,” says Paul Carratu, managing director of investigation firm Carratu International.

“Britain is one of the worst,” he added. “Whether it’s still an effect of (former Prime Minister) Margaret Thatcher’s free-market philosophy or not, I don’t know.”

Carratu, whose retired father Vincent is widely acknowledged to have been the forerunner in the field of IP enforcement during the 1970s, said another problem was lack of resources.

“Most of these crimes span more than one country. The police simply haven’t got the budget to chase them internationally.”

At the same time, the predominantly poor countries where much patent and copyright abuse originates shy away from enforcing thorough IP legislation.

They argue that they cannot afford the prices being charged for what is to them critical industrial equipment or health products made by Western multinationals.