Anti-Counterfeiting

Who do Counterfeit Products Impact?

Counterfeit products can pose a significant risk to people and human health, with the most severe incidents resulting in injury, illness, and death.

• Endangering Lives: Counterfeit life safety devices, electrical, and other dangerous fake products can increase the risk of injury or death to consumers, law enforcement, other first responders, supply chain personnel, and industry end users.
• No Safety Standards: Counterfeit products have not been evaluated or tested to appropriate standards. They lack safety assurance, they likely do not comply with safety requirements or regulations, and they may not function as intended or required.
• Unsafe Manufacturing: Counterfeit products manufactured in unregulated and unhygienic locations can introduce foreign or harmful chemicals and banned substances that could pose significant risks to human health and safety.
• Transportation Hazards: Counterfeit products can pose significant challenges during transportation when they enter maritime, airline, rail, and highway cargo networks — potentially risking the safety of personnel working in these sectors.

Product counterfeiting threatens our communities and significantly impacts society in many ways. It funds transnational organized crime and other criminal activities, deprives governments of revenue for critical services, and threatens economic security. It also poses risks to vital infrastructure, the digital ecosystem, and transportation networks, and can cause substantial damage and destruction to public and private property.

• Risk to Infrastructure: Counterfeit products can infiltrate supply chains, introducing unsafe components, chips, and software with malware and viruses into critical infrastructures and industries, which can cause system failures.
• Endangering Property: Counterfeit products can lead to dangerous outcomes, including explosions, fires, electrical failures, and other system malfunctions that can cause significant damage or destruction of public and private property.
• Funding Illicit Activities: Counterfeit products fund organized crime, which funnels billions into other illicit activities. They also create unfair competition, limit research and technology, hinder innovation, and undermine the rule of law.
• Forced Labor: Counterfeiters ignore labor laws and safety regulations, exploit human trafficking for forced and coerced labor, and can use children to manufacture, distribute, and sell their illegal and hazardous products globally.

Counterfeit products can have a severe ecological impact on our planet and the environment throughout their entire lifecycle — from manufacturing and distribution to transportation, storage, recycling, and disposal.

• Alarming Scale: Product counterfeiting encompasses thousands of companies, industries, and product categories. Hundreds of millions of unsafe fake products enter the supply chain and reach global marketplaces, consumers, and landfills.
• Toxic Hazards: Counterfeit products may include dangerous chemicals, unknown or banned substances, toxins, and other unsafe materials, negatively impacting groundwater, inland and coastal waterways, fish, wildlife, and the food chain.
• Contaminated Ecosystems: Unsafe and improper disposal practices can cause significant and long-lasting environmental harm, contaminating life-sustaining ecosystems that provide food, water, and medicine to sustain human civilization.
• Lasting Harm: Improper recycling and unsafe disposal of counterfeit products through open burning, burial, dumping in rivers or oceans, or other unsustainable methods can cause severe ecological harm that could last decades.

How is ULSE Anti-Counterfeiting Working to Combat IP Crime?

ULSE Anti-Counterfeiting acts as a neutral convener and objective resource to engage cross-sector stakeholders, practitioners, and experts. We leverage collaborative efforts and collective action to address significant product counterfeiting challenges that impact people, our communities, and our planet. Learn More. 

Contact ULSE Anti-Counterfeiting.
 

Related Resources

• 2024 ULSE Holiday Safety Guide (see "Holiday Fakes Have Real Consequences" section)
• Counterfeit Goods and the Public's Health and Safety
• IP Crime and Its Link to Other Serious Crimes: Focus on Poly-Criminality (European Union Intellectual Property Office)
• The Economic Cost of IPR Infringement in the Tires and Batteries Sectors (EUIPO)
• The Perfect Partnership: Innovation and Intellectual Property Protection in the 2020s (SICPA)
• Brand Protection: Covert Solutions for a Covert Challenge (SICPA)
• European Citizens and Intellectual Property: Perception, Awareness, and Behaviour 2023 (EUIPO)