Illicit trade in counterfeit goods causes economic damage by reducing sales and profits as well as innovation incentives in legitimate industries. This study looks at damages caused by illicit trade in counterfeits to small and medium-sized enterprises. The robust evidence on the magnitude, scope and trends of this risk informs policy makers about the need to include anti-counterfeiting elements in policy packages designed to support SMEs.
Tobacco use has declined because of measures such as high taxes on tobacco products and bans on advertising, but worldwide there are still more than one billion people who regularly use tobacco, including many who purchase products illicitly. By contrast to many other commodities, taxes comprise a substantial portion of the retail price of cigarettes in the United States and most other nations. Large tax differentials between jurisdictions increase incentives for participation in existing illicit tobacco markets. In the United States, the illicit tobacco market consists mostly of bootlegging from low-tax states to high-tax states and is less affected by large-scale smuggling or illegal production as in other countries. In the future, nonprice regulation of cigarettes - such as product design, formulation, and packaging - could in principle, contribute to the development of new types of illicit tobacco markets. Understanding the U.S. Illicit Tobacco Market reviews the nature of illicit tobacco markets, evidence for policy effects, and variations among different countries with a focus on implications for the United States. This report estimates the portion of the total U.S. tobacco market represented by illicit sales has grown in recent years and is now between 8.5 percent and 21 percent. This represents between 1.24 to 2.91 billion packs of cigarettes annually and between $2.95 billion and $6.92 billion in lost gross state and local tax revenues. Understanding the U.S. Illicit Tobacco Market describes the complex system associated with illicit tobacco use by exploring some of the key features of that market - the cigarette supply chain, illicit procurement schemes, the major actors in the illicit trade, and the characteristics of users of illicit tobacco. This report draws on domestic and international experiences with the illicit tobacco trade to identify a range of possible policy and enforcement interventions by the U.S. federal government and/or states and localities.
This report, one in a series of studies by the OECD and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), enhances understanding of the issues and challenges facing governments, businesses and society posed by the trade in fake pharmaceutical products. Illicit markets for fake pharmaceuticals are attractive for counterfeiters, given the high profit margins, low risks of detection and prosecution, weak penalties, and the ease with which consumers can be deceived into believing that the counterfeit products are genuine. Counterfeit medicines not only cause economic damage for the sector, but are also a significant threat to public health, since fake medicines are often not properly formulated and may contain dangerous ingredients. Fake pharmaceuticals include antibiotics, lifestyle treatments, pain killers, anti-malarial drugs, diabetes treatments and central nervous system medicines.
The adulteration and fraudulent manufacture of medicines is an old problem, vastly aggravated by modern manufacturing and trade. In the last decade, impotent antimicrobial drugs have compromised the treatment of many deadly diseases in poor countries. More recently, negligent production at a Massachusetts compounding pharmacy sickened hundreds of Americans. While the national drugs regulatory authority (hereafter, the regulatory authority) is responsible for the safety of a country's drug supply, no single country can entirely guarantee this today. The once common use of the term counterfeit to describe any drug that is not what it claims to be is at the heart of the argument. In a narrow, legal sense a counterfeit drug is one that infringes on a registered trademark. The lay meaning is much broader, including any drug made with intentional deceit. Some generic drug companies and civil society groups object to calling bad medicines counterfeit, seeing it as the deliberate conflation of public health and intellectual property concerns. Countering the Problem of Falsified and Substandard Drugs accepts the narrow meaning of counterfeit, and, because the nuances of trademark infringement must be dealt with by courts, case by case, the report does not discuss the problem of counterfeit medicines.
This timely and exhaustive study offers a much-needed examination of the scope and consequences of the electronic counterfeit trade. The authors describe a variety of shortcomings and vulnerabilities in the electronic component supply chain, which can result in counterfeit integrated circuits (ICs). Not only does this book provide an assessment of the current counterfeiting problems facing both the public and private sectors, it also offers practical, real-world solutions for combatting this substantial threat. · Helps beginners and practitioners in the field by providing a comprehensive background on the counterfeiting problem; · Presents innovative taxonomies for counterfeit types, test methods, and counterfeit defects, which allows for a detailed analysis of counterfeiting and its mitigation; · Provides step-by-step solutions for detecting different types of counterfeit ICs; · Offers pragmatic and practice-oriented, realistic solutions to counterfeit IC detection and avoidance, for industry and government.
The expansion of world trade has brought with it an explosive growth in counterfeit merchandise. Estimates put the world total for counterfeit products at about one half trillion dollars annually, although it is impossible to accurately determine the true size of the counterfeit market. What is known is that this illicit trade has infected nearly every industry from pharmaceuticals to aircraft parts. Software and music piracy are easy targets widely reported in the media. In 2007, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) estimated that 38% of personal computer software installed worldwide was illegal and the losses to the software industry were $48 billion worldwide. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) reported a 58% increase in the seizures of counterfeit CDs. Overall, a wide range of industries agree that there is a severe problem with the protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) throughout the world, yet there have been virtually no attempts to describe all aspects of the problem. This work aims to give the most complete description of various characteristics of the IPR environment in a global context. We believe a holistic understanding of the problem must include consumer complicity to purchase counterfeit products, tactics of the counterfeiters (pirates) as well as actions (or inaction) by home and host governments, and the role of international organizations and industry alliances. This book establishes the full environmental aspects of piracy, describes successful anti-counterfeiting actions and then prescribes measures IPR owners should take to protect their intellectual property.
This study examines the value, scope and trends of trade in counterfeit and pirated goods. First, it presents the overall scale of this trade and discusses which parts of the economy are particularly at risk. Next, it looks at the main economies of origin of fakes in global trade. Finally, it ...
This study has emerged from an ongoing program of trilateral cooperation between WHO, WTO and WIPO. It responds to an increasing demand, particularly in developing countries, for strengthened capacity for informed policy-making in areas of intersection between health, trade and IP, focusing on access to and innovation of medicines and other medical technologies.
