The port Custom Authority of Genoa operated the biggest ever seizure of blank cd-rs in Italy and alleged to be destined to the pirate market. The 1,500,000 Princo branded cd-rs were seized after an inspection of containers shipped from China to a company located in Naples.

According to Italian patent law the cd-rs imported from China are in violation of the legitimate copyright owner of the cd-r patent. The anti-fraud action from the Italian customs has very good consequences on the preventive operations against music piracy in Italy. The Italian Customs is using sophisticated scanner equipment to monitor the content of shipments from countries with a high level of counterfeiting in order to identify and stop pirate goods which are flowing into Italy damaging the national industry.

FPM, Italian antipiracy federation signed a MoU with the Italian Customs with the specific goal to fight music piracy. A new model of agreement will be signed in thenext few months in order to implement the recent development in the Customs regulation and in order to increase cooperation.