By Erin Geiger Smith

NEW YORK, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Intellectual property enforcement is one of the top priorities of the U.S. Justice Department, a top cybercrime prosecutor said at a legal conference on Friday.

However, stopping the import of counterfeit goods and the illegitimate websites that sell them "is not an area we can prosecute our way out of," said Andrea Sharrin, the deputy chief of the Justice Department's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section.

Sharrin and other government officials and practitioners spoke at an Intellectual Property Enforcement and Litigation conference in New York hosted by the Practising Law Institute.

It is critical, Sharrin said, to have an ongoing dialogue with the owners of patents, trademarks or copyrights, and to raise public awareness about the consequences of intellectual property crime.

When the Justice Department prosecutes intellectual property-related crime, cases involving health and safety - such as counterfeit medication - are among the top priorities, she said.

Other priority areas are trade secrets and economic espionage, organized criminal enterprises, as well as large-scale piracy and counterfeiting, particularly online, Sharrin said.

The speakers also discussed new data on the global trade in fake goods.

More than $1.2 billion worth of counterfeit goods were seized by the United States in the 2012 fiscal year, and more than 80 percent of that merchandise originated from mainland China and Hong Kong, according to U.S. government data released in January.

Of the goods seized, apparel accounted for the largest number of items, 29 percent, followed by media items such as DVDs and CDs, handbags and wallets, and pharmaceuticals, noted Mark Witzal, deputy director for the National Intellectual Property Coordination Center, which coordinates the U.S. response to global intellectual property theft.

The numbers represent seizures made by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

Counterfeit goods do not just include knock-offs of brand-name clothing or movies, Witzal said.

He showed a video of government tests on counterfeit airbags that had been confiscated. The airbags exploded and caught fire, rather than deploying properly.

Witzal also cited a government project that targeted sites selling counterfeit pharmaceuticals. The government seized more than 686 domain names in that project, all from a coordinated network, he said.

Brian Brokate, an attorney at Gibney Anthony & Flaherty, said disabling websites selling counterfeit products is often the highest priority for companies looking to protect the integrity of their brand names.

In October, a Florida federal judge granted Chanel Inc's request that control of domain names, including chanelbagsforsale-us.com, be transferred to Chanel.

The company did not even request monetary damages in that case, Brokate said, because monetary damages would be difficult to actually recover and the company's priority was to keep the websites from selling fake goods.

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