The Fight against Industrial and Intellectual Piracy
National Security Forces intervened in 4,584 crimes against Intellectual Property in 2009, arrested 5,131 people and seized 5,162,432 items valued at more than 438 million euros. This is the primary data resulting from operations carried out by the National Police and Civil Guard against industrial and intellectual piracy presented by representatives of the ministries of the Interior, Industry, Tourism and Trade and Culture, and the National Association for Brand Defense (Andema).
Of the total operations performed, 56% were for crimes against Intellectual Property and the remainder (44%), against Industrial Property. Regarding the estimated valuation of the goods confiscated, 95% (more than 418 million euros) corresponds to Industrial Property, while the value of items related to Intellectual Property totaled 19.8 million euros, to which must be added the economic damage resulting from the unauthorized use of intellectual property rights on the Internet.
The total value of goods seized increased by 13% compared to 2008 (438 million euros in 2009 compared to 385 million last year), despite the fact that the number of seized goods decreased by 30.7% (7.4 million products in 2008 versus 5.1 million in 2009). 32.3% of these objects were toys, 10.9% leather goods and accessories, 7.8% computer equipment, 7.7% audiovisual equipment and 7.2% phonographic material. When based on Autonomous Communities, Madrid was where most confiscations took place with 25.2%, followed by Andalusia (24%) and Valencia (18.2%).
Industrial Property
Last year, National Security Forces performed 2,014 operations involving activities infringing on industrial property rights, arrested 2,198 people and seized 4.1 million items. The economic assessment of this material amounts to at least 418.2 million euros.
By sector, the hardest hit was that of leather goods and accessories (42% of the total value of confiscations corresponded to these products), followed by jewelry and watches (16.7%), information technology (16.1%) and toys (10%). It’s worth pointing out that the toy sector was at the top of the list of confiscations (32.5% of the total), which shows that there are more and more counterfeit products that affect the consumer safety.
In terms of confiscation percentages, 51.3% of products seized related to infringement of industrial property rights were developed in factories or warehouses, 25.8% in retail establishments, 17.7% were for purposes of tax shelter and 2.4% corresponded to illegal street vending. As for the autonomous communities, a significantly high number of confiscations took place in Andalusia (27.8%), the Community of Valencia (17.7%), Madrid (13.4%) and Catalonia (12.2%).
Intellectual Property
In 2009, confiscations by police of goods protected by intellectual property rights increased by 17% (2,570 compared to 2,184 in 2008). In these operations, the National Police and Civil Guard arrested 2,933 people and seized more than a million items valued at 19.8 million euros. Economic damage through the misuse of Internet intellectual property rights must also be added to this figure. By sector, audiovisual material accounted for 37.7% of confiscations, closely followed by phonographic material with 35.5%. The remaining sectors are below 3%.
As to where confiscations took place, in 2009 there was a significant decrease of street vending (which went from 81% of confiscations in 2008 to 41.5% in 2009) and an increase of confiscations in homes, which reached 50.7% when in 2008 it only accounted for 8.2% of confiscations. By autonomous community, 34.4% of confiscations took place in Madrid, followed by Andalusia (20.9%) and Valencia (18.6%).
www.oepm.es
