The global trade in fakes: a worrying threat

The Observatory of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) together with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released last June the third report in the series: The world trade in fakes: a worrying threat. This report analyzes the global trade in counterfeit products. This third report is an update of the previous two, published in 2016 and 2019 respectively.

It offers an analysis of the most recent data available on customs seizures, corresponding to the year 2019.

The main conclusions are:

• The world trade in counterfeits accounts for 2.5% of the products sold. The number of counterfeits sold amounted to 414,000 million euros.
• Of the total imports that were made into the EU from third countries, 5.8% corresponds to counterfeit products, we are talking about 119,000 million euros. Comparing the volume of imports of counterfeit merchandise with that of the previous study, it is found that it remains practically unchanged.
• In terms of the origin of counterfeits, China remains the main source economy. Other main places where counterfeit goods come from are Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Singapore.
• By product category, the most numerous seizures were footwear, followed by clothing, leather and leather goods, electronic products, and perfumery and cosmetics. It is noteworthy that the seizures of counterfeit perfumery, cosmetics, toys and games have increased a lot, doubling since the data of the study prior to this one.

All the detailed information in the following links:

Summary

Full Report (English)