ELYRIA, Ohio — Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems is coming out in support of bill S. 522 in the U.S., which is intended to improve the management, coordination, and effectiveness of domestic and international intellectual property rights enforcement.

Co-sponsored by Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Indiana, and Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, the bill will not only allocate more resources in the fight against product counterfeiting, but will mandate federal agencies report to Congress on the progress of these efforts.

Counterfeiting is estimated to cost U.S. manufacturers more than $250 billion in lost revenue each year and often can flood markets with inferior products, leading to a threat to public safety, says Bendix, a tireless promoter of stricter enforcement of knockoff products.

“We applaud Sen. Bayh and Sen. Voinovich for taking this important step in protecting intellectual property,” said Andy Cifranic, brand manager, Bendix.

“In the commercial vehicle industry, particularly within the braking system, the impact to affected manufacturers is far more than lost revenue … it’s about safety. The nature of our business involves efficiently stopping 80,000-pound vehicles, so any compromise to the integrity of vehicle braking systems due to poorly manufactured knockoff components has an impact on our brand, but more importantly, it can also have very serious consequences for our customers and highway safety in general.”

Bendix, which 2006 was one of seven organizations who participated in a supply chain study by the Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy, has built on the momentum of its multi-year awareness campaign by: expanding its cooperation with policymakers to combat the influx of knockoffs; increasing its enforcement efforts against trademark, patent, and intellectual property infringement; and expanding the capture and testing of counterfeit parts to educate the transportation industry on the hazards of inferior components.

The component supplier has also accelerated its ongoing field capture and testing program for knock-off and counterfeit products, including key brake system valves and air treatment components. According to recent results, these knockoff products often experience faster wear, degraded performance, and complete failure due to inferior materials, engineering and manufacturing processes.

“Brakes are not the place to cut corners,” Cifranic said. “When purchasing replacement parts, if the price is too good to be true, it probably is. With knockoffs populating the shelves in retail locations across North America, every week we learn of yet another situation where a disappointed consumer thought they were buying ‘the real McCoy’ but they walked away with just the opposite.”