Pirates come from the East. China is by far the biggest source of counterfeits; it accounts for 85% of seizures related to online sales and 51% of global seizures of physical store sales. This is the result of the latest joint study by the Euipo (European Union Intellectual Property Office) and the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) this week.
Why Chinese? “It is not viable to register every container that arrives at European ports. In addition, online commerce, which has skyrocketed especially with the pandemic, has also greatly hampered the work of detecting counterfeits at customs due to the enormous volume of small packages that are delivered every day," they say from Euipo. In the case of China, counterfeiters tend to ship counterfeit goods directly, avoiding normal transit points in order to reduce the risk of seizure at the final destination and thus eliminate documents.
The scourge is not a simple anecdote. Nearly 6.8% of the imports of the European Union, for a value of 120,000 million euros, are represented by goods that incorporate some violation of intellectual property. According to the study, 15% of SMEs have suffered some violation of their exclusive rights. This percentage is higher among SMEs that have presented innovations: in this case, one in five companies suffers losses as a result of illegal copies.
According to Euipo, 37% of young people buy counterfeit products on purpose. In addition, investigations have confirmed the relationship between the violation of intellectual property rights and organized crime, including its connection with other very serious crimes such as drug trafficking, cybercrime, fraud or money laundering.
What is hacked? The most frequently affected products are electrical machinery and electronic items (30% of seizures), clothing (18%), perfumery and cosmetics (10%), and games and toys (also 10%). %). Furthermore, many of these counterfeit products are of substandard quality, often posing a threat to the health of consumers.
From an economic point of view, the study warns that an SME that has been subject to infringement of intellectual property rights is 34% less likely to survive than one that has not suffered such infringement.
However, the business fabric is not aware of the risk. Only 7% of SMEs and 15% of medium-sized ones have registered trademarks. And 40% of SMEs acknowledge that "they do not monitor the markets to detect possible violations of their intellectual property rights, or they only rely on customer comments or information from their business partners."
