ROCHESTER HILLS, MI — AutoWeb Communications, a global provider of engineering data-exchange services for the automotive and aerospace industries, expects dramatic growth in its Asia Pacific business as the threat of intellectual property theft spreads throughout the region.

Doug Halliday, AutoWeb’s director of product management, estimated that the auto industry today is losing more than $16 billion a year as a result of product piracy and counterfeit-parts trade. He added that industry losses to counterfeiting are growing at an annual rate of between 9 and 11 percent.

“Our research indicates that Intellectual property crime is one of the fastest-growing areas of criminal activity in the world,” Halliday said. “Multi-national companies in the aerospace and automotive industries that are rapidly expanding their presence in emerging markets such as China, India and Russia are especially concerned.”

The AutoWeb executive said that his company’s business in the Asia Pacific region has increased an astounding 2,000 percent in the last two years. AutoWeb’s exceptional growth in the region is largely attributable to the expansion of manufacturing companies to Asia Pacific and reflects an emerging business need in the budding market.

“We expect growth rates in our data-exchange networks to continue on a steep upward curve as more and more companies realize the need to secure vital engineering and product-development data with the expansion of their business operations in emerging markets,” Halliday noted.

He added that an AutoWeb study on counterfeiting and intellectual-property piracy will be released later this year to help organizations become more pro-active in protecting products and proprietary data from unauthorized use.

Headquartered in the Detroit suburb of Rochester Hills, AutoWeb provides secure data-exchange services for more than 19,000 users at 2,500 companies in 38 countries around the world, including a significant number of major automotive manufacturers and their suppliers.

AutoWeb’s product portfolio includes four major offerings to facilitate secure engineering data exchange throughout various supply chains and corporate engineering groups. AutoWeb products include:

— Intellectual Property Exchange – One of the company’s core product offerings, Intellectual Property Exchange enables the secure exchange of product and design data among OEM’s, partners and suppliers.

— Translations Exchange Utility – Working in tandem with AutoWeb’s Intellectual Property Exchange service, this exchange utility seamlessly “translates” or converts computer-aided-design (CAD) data for use among companies using different CAD data-file formats.

— Standards Exchange Service – A data distribution service, it also notifies users by e-mail whenever a specification they are using has been updated or changed. The Standards Exchange Service provides users with instant access to supplier lists, engineering material specifications and a variety of CAD, drafting and other standards.

— Collaborative Exchange Utility – The collaborative exchange service provides subscribers with a secure Internet-based “project room” to facilitate real-time, collaborative communications on key engineering issues.

AutoWeb works with some of the world’s leading automotive manufacturers and their suppliers, including DaimlerChrysler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Mitsubishi and Nissan, as well as Lear, Federal-Mogul, Johnson Controls, Metaldyne and Visteon.

Formed in 1995, AutoWeb is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NTT Communications. The company’s products provide simple, powerful methods for its customers to securely exchange data in order to speed product development, reduce design-and-production costs and further leverage supplier resources. Additional information is available at autoweb.net.

Click here to view the rest of today’s headlines