Trade and counterfeit

Counterfeiting and piracy are terms used to describe a range of illicit activities linked to intellectual property rights infringement. It includes violation of trademarks, copyrights, patents, design rights, as well as a number of related rights. Counterfeiting of goods can be seen as one of the most significant drawback of globalization economy. This widespread parallel economy perfectly succeeded in integrating itself to the economic globalization. But the phenomenon is much more complex that what we can see in newspapers or in stores during holidays.
The huge amount of money generated by the trade of counterfeited goods all around the world underlines the emergency to tackle the issue as soon as possible. Above all, counterfeiting of goods asks several question on economic or public health.

I. Current situation

Statistics about trade and counterfeit

• The counterfeit of goods represents, the 2007 OECD report says, 250 billion dollars in value. This does not include the counterfeit and pirated goods that are produced and consumed locally and all the piracy issue on the Internet (illegal file sharing using P2P technology is not included for instance) If those two items were added in the study, the amount of global counterfeit business could be several billion dollars more. In 2007, the total amount of global trade reached 5000 billion dollars. Counterfeit of goods represents 5% of global trade.

• Industrial sectors are more and more threatened by counterfeit. Indeed, if we all have heard about the piracy of digital files (music, software,…) almost all industrial sectors are now dealing with the issue of counterfeit. Here’s a non exhaustive list of goods that are subject to intellectual property rights infringements: car parts, apparel, footwear, designers’ clothes, chemicals, consumers’ electronic, pharmaceuticals, food, drink, agricultural products, personal accessories (jewels, watches,…), tobacco and