Falsification of trademarks, patents, industrial espionage, sales of online imitations on “flirtatious” sites. One in four SMEs among those that hold trademarks, patents or industrial designs in Europe claim to have suffered infringements of intellectual property. Of these, almost 27% – exactly 26.8% – are found only in Italy.
In addition to affecting consumers, counterfeiting activities also cause significant damage to the EU economy, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. Because, according to the scoreboard for SMEs, published by the EU Agency for the protection of Intellectual Property (Euipo), companies that own trademarks or patents have reported loss of turnover (33%), damage in terms of reputation (27 %) and loss of competitive advantage (15%).
A damage because the SMEs that own trademarks and patents are also the most competitive, recording a turnover per employee that is 68% higher than the companies that do not have them.
A problem that greatly affects Made in Italy, considering that Italy is confirmed, despite the covid and the economic fragility of some sectors, in 10th position, in Europe, for patent applications (about 4,600) and that, instead, on the in front of brands (thanks also to the presence of leading sectors such as agri-food and textiles / fashion), it even ranks fourth.
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“Last year – explained the deputy executive director of Euipo, Andrea Di Carlo – the applications for recognition of new brands and logos have seen, in Europe, almost 29 thousand requests from China, almost 25 thousand from Germany, over 17 thousand from the USA and 14 thousand from Italy. Provisional positioning which is also confirmed in the first half of this difficult 2021 ».
EU-China agreement: Chinese companies in the TMview database
Meanwhile, 3 weeks ago, the EU Office (Euipo) and the Chinese National Intellectual Property Administration officially started the inclusion of Chinese trademarks in TMview. “This is an international information database – continued Di Carlo – in which companies and professionals can consult the details of a trademark free of charge such as country of origin, products and / or services, type and date of registration, with the aim to minimize the risk of fraud and litigation. It will allow, for example, to understand if there is a similar trademark to yours already registered in China or if an identical trademark has already been registered. This will allow you to make informed decisions and countermeasures. In this way, more than 32 million registered Chinese trademarks are now available online. TMview will thus pass from over 62 million to 90 million entries ».
Counterfeit products
According to Euipo, almost one in 10 Europeans (9%) claimed to have unintentionally purchased counterfeit products due to misleading information (misleading sites, ambiguous information).
However, significant differences emerge between the EU member states: the citizens most victims of counterfeiting are those of Bulgaria (19%), Romania (16%) and Hungary (15%), while Sweden (2%) and Denmark (3 %) have the lowest percentages within the European Union.
Italy, where 6% of the population claims to have been tricked into buying counterfeit products, is well below the EU average. In a global context in which e-commerce is experiencing a phase of expansion (according to Eurostat, over 70% of Europeans made online purchases in 2020), one third of Europeans (33%) questioned the originality of the product purchased.