The fake market sees Italy on the podium in the world: 11% of the goods seized are in fact Italian products. This was revealed by a joint study by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (Euipo) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Goods produced by Italian companies represent 11% of the counterfeit products seized between 2011 and 2019. In the ranking, Italy is third only to the United States and Switzerland, which own 50% and 13% of all goods seized in the last 9 years. China remains the market from which the vast majority of counterfeit products come and accounts for 85% of seizures related to online sales and 51% of seizures of offline sales worldwide.
According to the latest scoreboard, 15% of small and medium-sized enterprises – which make up 99% of the total in the EU – have suffered a violation of registered intellectual property rights. The most affected products are electrical machinery and electronics (30% of seizures), clothing (18%), perfumery and cosmetics (10%) and toys and games (again 10%). Half of the counterfeit products seized at EU borders infringing SMEs’ intellectual property rights were bought online.