EUIPO Study Looks At State Of IPR Infringement In The EU

A report published today by the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) deplores rising volume of intellectual property rights infringement in both immaterial goods and digital content and warns against the economic effects for the Union.

The report is available here.

The report, according to the executive summary [pdf] provided by the EUIPO, combines research conducted or commissioned by the EUIPO’s Observatory on the Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights, partly together with other institutions, since 2013. It looks into the value of IP and the cost of infringement, the public’s perception of it and the modus operandi of perceived infringers.

The EUIPO is the office, located in Spain, responsible for EU trademarks and the registered European Community design.

With a calculated total contribution to the EU economy of 42 percent of GDP (EUR 5.7 trillion) by IPR-intensive industries and a “trade surplus” of approximately EUR 96 billion, the synthesis study suggests considerable losses due to the infringement.

According to a study carried out by the EUIPO and the OECD in 2016, estimates of IPR infringement in international trade in 2013 could reach as much as 5 percent of EU imports, or EUR 85 billion per year, it said.

Another series of sectoral studies untertaken by the EUIPO “estimated lost sales in 13 sectors (directly in the industries being analysed and across their associated supply chain), as a result of counterfeiting. These losses totalled more than EUR 100 billion per year.“

The synthesis also draws on studies exploring the motivations of customers to buy or use infringed goods, namely lower prices and easy accessibility.

In a first reaction, the industry-backed Anti-Counterfeiting Group (ACG) welcomed the report, saying it draws attention to a “comparatively disregarded form of criminality.”

Alison Stratham, ACG director general, in a press release stated: “Massive amounts of money are being diverted into criminal hands and much of this is being used to support and promote other forms of exploitative crimes such as child labour and the trafficking of human beings, drugs and weapons.” Also fakes are becoming evermore dangerous, she said.

Cost effects detrimental to public authorities and their citizens from strict IPR protection and enforcement, for example from high-priced patented drugs, regularly are not taken into account in the IPR cost studies, however.

[Update:] There also have been academics challenging the narratives of studies used in the EUIPO synthesis report. The study on IP-intensive industries from 2013 cited frequently could not give evidence for the “causal relationship between IP and the economic data,” wrote Annette Kur from the Max-Planck-Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich. “It cannot reveal whether (or to what degree) IP protection is a factor which as such boosts the economic performance of certain industries or countries.”

 

Image Credits: EUIPO