Private prosecutions are taking off as a useful way to protect your brand & products, as Matt Bosworth explains
- The era of the corporate Private Prosecution is firmly established.
- An all-encompassing brand protection strategy is required in many industries.
The concept of the Private Prosecution, that is an action brought by a private individual, or entity who/which is not acting on behalf of the police or other prosecuting authority under section 6(1) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985, is not one that is new to the law in England and Wales, with those rights having been long established.
The use of Private Prosecutions has attracted interest from the business world because of the Metropolitan Police Crime Assessment Policy of 2017 that set out how the police may:
- no longer investigate low level crimes including public order offences, shoplifting, and criminal damage under the value of £200
- impose a 20 minute limit on examining CCTV for ‘petty’ crimes
These are just two examples of areas of re-deployment of police time given the new realities of budget and personnel
