manufactured goods counterfeiting and past twenty years has caused immense piracy activities existed as far back as economic harm to legitimate goods the Middle Ages when bakers, artisans, manufacturers, as well as amplified and craftsmen used distinctive marks to health and safety concerns. In order to distinguish their products and work from mitigate the risks associated with would-be counterfeiters. The general increased levels of intellectual property problems associated with modern day theft, manufacturers must assess their counterfeiting and intellectual property intellectual property strategy and adopt piracy have long been recognized, yet more sophisticated methods of today’s high-tech economy has protection to keep pace with today’s magnified the problem of intellectual more refined counterfeiting operations. property theft, allowing counterfeiting
Scope of Intellectual Property Theft
T he illicit business of copying other’s products and designs and selling them as cheaper, usually substandard dollars from the global economy. In
1996, this figure jumped to as much as an estimated $200 billion. The look-a-likes is an underground industry economic value of global counterfeiting worth billions. In a written statement in 2003 is estimated at $500 billion. before the Senate Committee on the Various organizations, including
Judiciary, Thomas J. Donohue, President Interpol, estimate that the trade in and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of counterfeit goods ranges between 6-9%
Commerce stated, “Growth in the trade of all current world trade with volume of illegitimate goods over the past 20 sharply rising.2 The Federal Bureau of years is astounding, intellectual property Investigation has called counterfeiting crime is one of the fastest growing “the crime of the 21st century” as the criminal enterprises worldwide.” In technology needed to operate
1982, it was estimated that the trade in sophisticated counterfeit operations has illegitimate goods drained 5.5 billion become easily accessible.
“Intellectual property crime is one of the fastest growing criminal enterprises worldwide” www.autoweb.net 3 Intellectual Property Theft and China
F or decades, piracy and counterfeiting activities have followed predictable pattern, flourishing in