Raids mark opening day of IFA trade fair in Berlin (Roundup)

Aug 29, 2008, 16:21 GMT

Berlin - German customs agents swarmed through the IFA consumer-electronics fair, hunting for non-payers of royalties, shortly after the expo opened Friday in Berlin.

Led by Berlin prosecutors, the raids were prompted by complaints from international corporations about alleged illegal copying.

Many of the raids involved patented software used in digital electronic devices to improve the pictures and the sound. The patent owners expect royalties or fees every time the software is used. In Germany, using copyrighted software without a licence is an offence.

Norbert Scheithauer, a Berlin-region spokesman for the German customs service, said 220 agents had been deployed to seize evidence at about 50 booths at IFA in the course of Friday.

He denied there was any focus on Asian companies, saying European manufacturers were being raided too.

IFA is Europe's biggest annual expo of consumer-electronics products such as flat-panel televisions. This year it includes home appliances such as washing machines for the first time. IFA, which runs till Wednesday next week, features 1,245 manufacturers.

However the Berlin fair's ambition to rival the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held every January in Las Vegas, Nevada met with scorn Friday from a senior Panasonic executive, Joachim Reinhart.

In an interview he said he did not perceive the event as upgraded yet from a German fair into an international one, noting that many of the public events were conducted in German, rather than in English, which is much more widely spoken among Asian executives.

Jongwoo Park, the chief executive of South Korean conglomerate Samsung, addressed IFA visitors, telling them that wirelessly connecting digital devices from different manufacturers to one another would be the next step in the 'Digital Revolution.'