Counterfeit consumer good
[15] Among the leading industries that have been seriously affected by counterfeiting are software, music recordings, motion pictures, luxury goods and fashion clothes, sportswear, perfumes, toys, aircraft components, spare parts and car accessories, and pharmaceuticals.
[21][23] Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, who had served as U.S. ambassador to China, stated, "The vast, illicit transfer of American innovation is one of the most significant economic issues impacting U.S. competitiveness that the nation has not fully addressed.
"[21] In March 2017 U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to, among other things, ensure the timely and efficient enforcement of laws protecting Intellectual Property Rights holders from imported counterfeit goods.
[24] An Outside magazine article in 2016 discussed the psychology of sales, and the role of gullible consumers, perhaps blindly ignoring warning signs of a "killer deal", somehow justifying buying an item they know is a fake.
], counterfeit products exist in virtually every industry sector, including food, beverages, apparel, accessories, footwear, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, electronics, auto parts, toys, and currency.
[27] Countries mainly the U.S., U.K., Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, South Korea and Japan are among the hardest hit, as their economies thrive on producing high-value products, protected by intellectual property rights, including trademarks.
The problem is so widespread in China, the U.S. and Europe, that auction house Christie's has begun smashing empty bottles with a hammer to prevent them from entering the black market.
[36] While many online sellers such as Amazon are not legally responsible for selling counterfeit goods, when items are brought to their attention by a buyer, they will apply a takedown procedure and quickly remove the product listing from their website.
[38][39] In buying counterfeit goods directly from other smaller sellers, location is becoming less a factor, since consumers can purchase products from all over the world and have them delivered straight to their doors by regular carriers, such as USPS, FedEx and UPS.
[41] Counterfeit clothes, shoes, jewelry and handbags from designer brands are made in varying quality; sometimes the intent is only to fool the gullible buyer who only looks at the label and does not know what the real thing looks like, while others put some serious effort into mimicking fashion details.
Companies like Entrupy are determined to eradicate fake goods with an iPhone application and a standard small camera attachment which uses algorithms to detect even the most indistinguishable "super-fake".
[61] Counterfeit devices have been reverse-engineered (also called a Chinese Blueprint due to its prevalence in China) to produce a product that looks identical and performs like the original, and able to pass physical and electrical tests.
[61] Incidents involving counterfeit ICs has led to the Department of Defense and NASA to create programs to identify bogus parts and prevent them from entering the supply chain.
[63] They can also pose major threats to health and safety, such as when an implanted heart pacemaker stops,[64] an anti-lock braking system (ABS) fails, or a cell phone battery explodes.
Industry leaders feared that budding counterfeiters would soon be creating bags, apparel and jewelry at a lower production cost after gaining access to pirated blueprints or digital files from manufacturers.
Among the merchandise seized were counterfeit toys featuring popular children's characters such as Winnie the Pooh, Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants, Betty Boop, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, Spider-Man, Tweety, Mickey Mouse, Lightning McQueen and Pokémon.
In addition to the lost revenue, cosmetics brands are damaged when consumers experience unhealthy side effects, such as eye infections or allergic reactions, from counterfeit products.
The report notes that Chinese companies take discarded electronic parts from other nations, remove any identifying marks, wash and refurbish them, and then resell them as brand-new – "a practice that poses a significant risk to the performance of U.S. military systems.
Rather, what is fraudulent is the issuing by the reseller of a Certificate of Conformity that claims that their provenance is traceable, sometimes accompanied by the components being remarked to make it appear that they have been manufactured and tested to more stringent standards than is actually the case.
[111] Attorney General Eric Holder announced that "by seizing these domain names, we have disrupted the sale of thousands of counterfeit items, while also cutting off funds to those willing to exploit the ingenuity of others for their own personal gain.
[116][117] In 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to, among other things, ensure the timely and efficient enforcement of laws protecting intellectual property rights holders from imported counterfeit goods.
[121]: 231 On October 1, 2011, the governments of eight nations including Japan and the United States signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which is designed to help protect intellectual property rights, especially costly copyright and trademark theft.
The signing took place a year after diligent negotiations among 11 governments: Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States.
"[125] In early 2018 Interpol confiscated tonnes of fake products worth $25 million and arrested hundreds of suspects and broke up organized crime networks in 36 countries on four continents.
They raided markets, chemists, retail outlets, warehouses and border control points, where they seized among other things, pharmaceuticals, food, vehicle parts, tobacco products, clothing, and agrochemicals.
Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor, who has tried to prosecute counterfeiters, notes that major industries have suffered the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs due to the exploitation of child labor in sweatshops in New York and Asia.
According to Bruce Foucart, director of US Homeland Security's National Intellectual Property Coordination Centre, the sales of counterfeit goods funded the Charlie Hebdo attack of 2016 in Paris, which left 12 people dead and nearly a dozen more injured.
[44] Sales of pirated CDs have been linked to funding the 2004 Madrid train bombing, and investigations firm Carratu connects money from counterfeit goods to Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, the Japanese Yakuza, the ETA, and the Russian Mob.
It is advised by many that brands, tech platforms, governments and consumers require a comprehensive strategy and cross-sector collaboration to combat the multifaceted system enabling the international counterfeit market.
[140] So far, only United Kingdom, Scotland and Erie representatives have taken the initiative by using law enforcement and criminal charges to fight against counterfeiting and piracy on social media accounts.
