Blogging Shades

Per the Los Angeles Police Department, a blog entry detailing a recent capture of 43,000 counterfeit sunglasses, a bust worth a cool $8.5 million.

This blog entry by the LAPD is worth noting for reasons beyond the seized sunglasses. For one, Los Angeles is a world capital of creative intellectual property, and the blog specifically states that the Anti-Piracy unit within the LAPD is one of the few operating anywhere. Also, the entry claims that the Anti-Piracy unit has a close working relationship with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) - both headquartered in Los Angeles. This fact is not tangential - the LAPD is responding to the specific needs of its constituents in enforcing intellectual property laws. Those constituents suffer enormous harm from counterfeiting every day, while the city endures organized crime and other side effects of counterfeiting. And while the Los Angeles market is relatively small compared to the worldwide audience for counterfeits, the LAPD nevertheless devotes five detectives and one officer in its Anti-Piracy unit full time to combat intellectual property crimes such as counterfeiting.

Good for the LAPD. Now, with intellectual property a key component in the service industry that forms the backbone to the U.S. economy, perhaps other police departments across the country and even globally can emulate what the LAPD has done and start their own dedicated enforcement efforts against counterfeiting.