Companies which have suffered most at the hands of counterfeiters want to join forces with the government to fight the menace.

They want to sign a deal with the police to make it easy for them to use their equipment and laboratories to detect fake products.

Leading the charge is BAT East Africa which says it has received a "positive response" from the government on the proposal and that the affected companies will provide counterfeit goods detection machines and open their laboratories for testing goods.

Expert evidence The MoU will also allow police prosecutors to use employees of the affected firms to give expert evidence on technical issues when counterfeiters are taken to court.

Companies say this will improve the capacity of state officials to test for counterfeit goods and prepare adequate fool-proof evidence when cases go to court.

"We realised there is a shortage of equipment within the law enforcement and we would like to open up so that they can use our equipment," said Julie Adell-Owino, head of corporate and regulatory affairs for BAT in East Africa.

BAT is among companies heavily affected by illicit trade in cigarettes. Others include pharmaceuticals firm GSK, Unilever for consumer goods, Eveready for batteries and wines and spirits manufacturers.

It is estimated that Kenya loses Sh50 billion to Sh70 billion of GDP because of sale of counterfeit goods. A firm like Eveready East Africa has progressively lost 70 per cent of its market to counterfeits according to Omar Issa, the CEO of Investment Climate Facility which conducted a study on the cost of counterfeit in the region recently.

Every year, counterfeits also wipe out 13 per cent of BAT's sales. In the year 2008 when the company made sales of Sh17.4 billion for instance, it lost Sh2.3 billion to counterfeit traders.

In December, GSK discovered knock-offs of its best selling painkiller Panadol Extra in the market. Some of the fake tablets had already been sold to unsuspecting patients.

The study by Investment Climate Facility showed that about 30 per cent of medicines sold in Kenya are counterfeits and could harm consumers. It showed the East African Community last year lost Sh38 billion in taxes as a result of trade in counterfeits.

Kenya Police officials could not be reached to comment on this proposed partnership but the Kenya Private Sector Alliance secretariat official Anthony Wanjohi confirmed that the group is supporting the affected companies to work with the law enforcement officers for this purpose.

"They are doing what it takes to improve the business environment in Kenya and we support that," he said.

So far, BAT, GSK, Unilever and Eveready have been holding regular seminars for law enforcement and customs officials to sensitise them on issues related to counterfeits including the legal consequences of violating intellectual property rights.

Ms Adell-Owino said the response from the Administration Police, the Kenya Police, customs and judiciary officials has been positive. However, she said the firms would want police prosecutors to be replaced with lawyers because the ability of some to understand emerging issues is low.

Attorney-General Amos Wako revealed that the government was in the process of phasing out police prosecutors to enable them focus on their core function of maintaining law and order, and replace them with 473 lawyers by 2012.

"We have had situations where the court charge sheet drawn by police prosecutors is not even properly drafted. The court dismisses the charges and criminals are released," said Ms Adell-Owino.

The other issue companies are pushing for is the electronic profiling of criminals, unlike the current situation where criminal profiles are stored in manual records. The companies say electronic profiling will make it easier to retrieve historical data and help to map out the masterminds of counterfeit trade.

In the current situation, most counterfeit criminals are treated as first-time offenders especially when it becomes difficult to retrieve their files or if those files have been misplaced.

The companies are also lobbying to have penalties on counterfeit crimes made harsh to act as deterrent since this is not the case now. For instance, stealing a patent -- what the counterfeiters do -- only attracts fines of not more than Sh50,000 or a prison term of not more than five years.