Counterfeiting damages a company’s reputation and consumer confidence in the global market. It affects businesses and consumers alike by sowing mistrust in genuine products made by reputable brands it harms your business, your brand's reputation, and the marketing investment you put an effort and funds in so what to do if you are you suspicious or have knowledge of your product being counterfeited.
First let us define Counterfeiting, what can
you do in case of your products are being counterfeited and all of its general
aspects:
Counterfeiting
is a crime involving the theft of someone’s trademark.
A counterfeit
is an item that uses someone else’s trademark without their permission. By
making or selling a counterfeit, offenders seek to profit unfairly from the
trademark owner’s reputation.
Counterfeiting
is a fraudulent imitation a forgery in another word of a trusted brand and
product, and it is a serious crime.
Under federals laws, for example, criminal counterfeiting offenses can
be punished by incarceration and/or payments of fines as well as a total
destruction of the fake alleged products. Counterfeiting can also be prosecuted
as a felony in most countries worldwide.
Counterfeiting
is a huge business. In Fiscal Year 2020, over than 50 000 shipments of counterfeit
goods valued at over $3.3 billion has been seized at the Middle East. Globally,
the trafficking of counterfeit goods is much larger and growing. That growth is
driven in part by consumer demand. Actively purchasing and engaging with
counterfeit items can not only backfire on you if you are buying a defective or
dangerous product, but it can also contribute to human rights abuses and
organized crime across the globe.
Counterfeit
goods span multiple industries, including apparel, accessories, music,
software, medications, cigarettes, automobile and airplane parts, consumer
goods, toys, electronics, and much more.
Counterfeiting
is not a victimless crime, it often prey on consumer desire for low-cost
prices. Purchasing counterfeit products may seem like a cheap option compared
to the original product, but that low price comes at a high risks to yourself
and others:
Ø
It’s Unsafe: Counterfeit goods are often made using cheap,
substandard, and dangerous components that put consumers public health and
safety at risk.
Ø
It Might Cost you: Purchasing
from counterfeit websites puts you at risk for identity theft and credit card
fraud when you provide a counterfeit merchant with your information, while downloading
or streaming from illegal websites could put you at risk for malware which as
well can steal your personal or credit card information.
Ø
It’s Illegal:
Counterfeiting is illegal, and purchasing counterfeit products supports
unlawful activity.
Ø
It Comes At Costs To Your Country: Counterfeiters do not pay taxes, meaning less funds for your country’s
development.
Ø
It Supports Child Labor:
Counterfeiters do not pay their employees fair wages or benefits, have poor
working conditions, and often use forced or child labor.
Ø
It Supports Organized Crime: The profits
from counterfeiting sales have been linked to funding organized crime, drug
trafficking, and even terrorist activity which we all condemn.
Ø
It Hurts Legitimate Companies: Legitimate
manufacturers especially small business devote significant resources to
researching and developing products and building a reputation for quality among
consumers. Counterfeiters, in turn, seek to profit unfairly off of another
company’s good name, and it’s often fatal to small businesses and
entrepreneurs. The lost sales and profits that result from this unfair
competition translate directly into lower wages and lost jobs, as well as
higher prices for consumers.
The answer is
easy look for the “3 P’s” PRICE, PACKAGING and PLACE!
Price: If the price looks too good to be
true, it probably is.
Packaging: If the product is being sold
without its packaging, or the packaging appears to be of low quality or
includes printing errors for example, blurry pictures, typos, spelling, or
grammatical errors it is probably counterfeit.
Place: Consider where the product is being
sold:
· In-Store: Ask yourself
if you would typically expect to find the product sold in this type of location,
deal only with legitimate, established merchants.
· Online:
Counterfeiters often steal pictures and formatting from real websites to make
their websites look legit, so don’t be fooled by a professional-looking
website. Check out the fine print in the product descriptions, FAQs, “Contact
Us” pages, or their social media. The site is probably fake if you find typos,
grammatical and spelling errors, or incomplete information.
At Scutum IP
Law Firm we help you find and stop counterfeiters wherever they operate all over our
countries of jurisdictions. With our solid and proprietary monitoring platform, you
will be promptly notified about major infringements, while our relationships
with all key marketplaces enables us to sharply tackle unauthorized deals. Our
blend of expertise, technology, and data as well as in ground field
investigation allows for a hurried enforcement backup to take down illegal
listings, postings and fake products.
With us you can find instances of counterfeiting and take action to
prevent damage to your brand and revenue, we offer a complete Anti-Counterfeiting
services with an experienced and qualified team to conduct the most rigorous
market research, which able us to provide you with an expert
anti-counterfeiting service that involves:
Ø Monitoring and detection: On daily basis, we monitor for
infringements across hundreds of marketplace sites and conclude field
investigation seaway, airway and land way…etc.
Ø Assessment: Using both automated and manual
prioritization grounded on your conditions and needs, we identify the issues
that need immediate actions and proceed accordingly.
Ø
Enforcement: Our polyglot and strong counterfeiting
team achieve fast resolution; we have a 99% compliance success rate on most of
our counterfeiting cases.
Ø Reporting: Our counterfeiting team offers regular detailed
reports that can be tailored to meet your business requirements upon every
needed action and afterward it.
We
perceive you as a brand owner whom spend significant efforts and expense
building a recognizable mark and brand while creating high-quality goods and as
known to all brand owners the better a product becomes, the more famous and
consumers demands increases, the bigger chance of the product copying and
piracy becomes a major issue. In efforts to combat revenue losses and potential
for brand tarnishment, you must seek effective and efficient
anti-counterfeiting solutions the sooner the better.
Our intellectual property enforcement attorneys advise clients on solving
counterfeiting, piracy, and infringement impediments that plague companies and
brand owners all over the Mena region.
Due to the unique nature of counterfeiting, we have developed
comprehensive anti-counterfeiting enforcement solutions through customized
proactive programs providing IP enforcement services to address broad range of
issues including:
Ø
Brand Protection.
Ø
Anti-Counterfeiting
& Trademark Piracy.
Ø Detect
Counterfeit Goods.
Ø Legal
Consultations.
Ø Trademark Counterfeiting
Enforcement.
Ø
Cease and
Desist Letters.
Ø
Software
Counterfeiting Enforcement.
Ø
Copyright
Counterfeiting Enforcement.
Ø
Online Seller
Enforcement.
Ø
Luxury Brand
Protection.
Ø
Illegal Gray Market
Goods Enforcement.
Ø
Customs & Border
Protection IP Rights Enforcement.
Ø Litigation
Services.
Ø Customs
Measures.
Ø Market
Investigation.
Ø Online
Search.
For more information on how we can assist you with anti-counterfeiting
please do not hesitate to contact us.
Kindly note
that, the above information is simplified and must not be taken as a definitive
statement of the law or practice.