With the festive season approaching, millions of shoppers across the EU are buying Christmas presents for family and friends. AIM welcomes the initiatives of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and Europol to raise awareness on the negative impact of counterfeits, be it on consumers or the economy.
AIM messages to policy makers on this issue:
Europol’s interactive campaign: “don’t F***(ake) Up!”
The campaign aims to raise consumers’ awareness of the risks associated with buying fakes online. According to the agency, “Fake products such as clothing, cosmetics, pharmaceutical products, electronics or automotive parts, can be easily found online at a cheaper price than the original ones. Despite these products looking like a bargain, they pose serious risks to your safety and health. Learning how to identify these scam websites selling counterfeit goods is vital to protect yourself and those around you from this growing threat!
(…)Every time you buy fake products you are wasting your money on poor quality copies that can be very dangerous for your health and safety, and those of the ones around you. The damage these sales do to brands, businesses and economies goes beyond revenues: profits from counterfeiting fund other forms of serious organised crime like human trafficking, money laundering or labour exploitation, and its production factories violate in most cases labour and environmental laws and basic human rights.”
More information available via this link.
The economic facts – data from the EUIPO:
A series of studies carried out by the EUIPO through the European Observatory on Infringements of IPRs estimate that €83 billion and 790 000 jobs are lost every year across the EU due to counterfeiting and piracy.
More information on the studies under this link.
