According to the Counterfeiting Intelligence Bureau (CIB) of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), counterfeit goods make up 5 to 7% of world trade. Other estimates that include online sales puts the figure close to $1.5 trillion.
According to a study conducted by the Confederation of Indian Industries, the highest revenue losing industries due to counterfeit were FMCG (packaged goods) at about USD $3.28 billion, FMCG (personal goods) at USD $2.43 billion, auto components at USD $ 1.48 billion, mobile phones at USD $1.45 billion and tobacco at USD $ 1.44 billion.
Enforcement through criminal route
According to the Statistics 2015 released by the National Crime Records Bureau, the number of cases reported under the Copyright Act, 1957 in 2015 were only 5236. Combining with the cases which were reported in the previous years, the Police investigated over 8344 cases of piracy and counterfeiting in 2015 under the provisions of the Copyright and Trademark laws, respectively. According to the report, over 31443 cases registered under the Copyright Act in the previous years are still pending for trial and in 2015 only 33 cases were withdrawn or compounded.
The counterfeiting issue encompasses many facets of the economy, including intellectual property rights (IPR), security concerns, revenue and the issue cannot be cannot be handled or resolved by just one agency or group. The enforcement agencies and right owners throughout and across industries need to work together with all industry sectors and all points in the supply chain. One of the key underlying causes for the growth of counterfeiting is the inability of current supply chain systems to counter this criminal activity. The answer lies in greater visibility, traceability and transparency across supply chains.
We at LexOrbis work closely with industry specific investigators and the enforcement agencies to provide most effective solutions against piracy and counterfeiting issues in India. In the past years, our Enforcement team has investigated over 898 businesses across 16 cities in India and have organized over 400 raid actions against pirate and counterfeit businesses resulting in registration of 388 criminal cases. The industries included luxury goods, automobile components, electronic durables, FMCG, apparel, footwear and other consumables.