TYSONS CORNER, VIRGINIA – Two Dunlap Bennett & Ludwig intellectual property lawyers have been honored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) for fighting the flood of e-commerce vendors falsely claiming to sell “NIOSH Approved” respiratory devices, including “N95” masks.
DBL partner Alex Butterman and associate Daniel Davis were recognized for their roles in a multiagency collaboration, “Protecting the NIOSH Brand: Registering, Monitoring, and Enforcing Certification Marks to Combat Counterfeit and Respirators Misrepresenting Being NIOSH Approved.”
The project received NIOSH’s Bullard-Sherwood Research to Practice Award for Intervention, which recognizes outstanding efforts by NIOSH scientists, in partnership with other agencies and the private sector, in applying occupational safety and health research to prevent work-related injury, illness, and death.
DBL co-founder and partner Thomas Dunlap praised Butterman and Davis, and said the firm was honored to lend its expertise to the government on such a crucial mission.
“Consumers and healthcare workers alike rely on certification trademarks like ‘NIOSH Approved’ and the ‘N95’ designation; in fact, they rely on them with their lives, and they have the right to expect the government to justify that reliance by making sure the marks represent compliance with strict standards,” Dunlap said. “These marks can’t be just a marketing gimmick.”
Butterman said his work on the project “has probably been my most rewarding professional experience to date.” He considers himself “very fortunate to have the opportunity” to help the CDC, NIOSH, and their parent agency, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, “resolve a critical intellectual property issue with potentially dangerous consequences which impacted the work of these organizations in their battle on the front lines of the global COVID-19 pandemic.”
His associate, Davis, called it “an honor to work with the fantastic team of attorneys and scientists at DBL and at HHS, CDC, and NIOSH to help prevent the spread of counterfeit respiratory protective devices.” Counterfeiters also harm legitimate businesses that earn their NIOSH approvals, he added.
Butterman and Davis also thanked the other members of the team “and our foreign counterparts for their cooperation and professionalism in this difficult endeavor.”
According to NIOSH, “Protecting the NIOSH Brand” was prompted by the pandemic-fueled influx of counterfeit respiratory devices – a term that includes unapproved devices bearing a NIOSH mark as well as those that closely resemble a competitor’s NIOSH-approved device.
After a year of working with other federal and state agencies to confiscate and test counterfeits, NIOSH’s National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory (NPPTL) created the project to seek a “longer-term solution.”
The result was a three-pronged approach, which started with registering a dozen respirator-related certification marks, including “NIOSH Approved” and “N95,” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and internationally.
This was key, as unregistered marks have only common-law protection, which varies from state to state. Registration offers additional remedies and streamlines enforcement by allowing suit in U.S. federal courts and other countries, and supports actions by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The next step was to monitor the markets to identify counterfeit respirators, followed by legal action to block importation or remove those that were already being sold here.
“Protecting the NIOSH Brand” is already living up to its name, NIOSH said. In 2022, its first year of operation, the three-part strategy led to more than 6,000 investigations, with “legal takedown action” identified for 1,863 of those.
View the press release on EIN Presswire.
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