engleski

The Economic Impact of Trade in Counterfeit Goods and Consequences for Consumer Safety

The paper looks at the concept of intellectual property and trademark from a legal and economic point of view with an aim to explore the economic impact of trade in counterfeit goods. A more affordable price of fake luxury goods and the increasing ease of online trading are the main reasons for the growing demand for tighter control of trade in goods from certain parts of the world. However, inferior quality of such products and non-standardized production processes may pose a substantial risk to the health and safety of consumers. Online purchase of counterfeit products increases these risks even more because the consumer is not able to examine the product before buying it. The paper gives an overview of the development of legal environment for the protection of intellectual property and trademark at the EU level with a view to identifying a more efficient plan for raising consumer awareness and enabling access to information on the negative impacts of counterfeiting and piracy. The direct commercial impacts of trade in counterfeit goods on the trademark owner’s company are the lost revenue, potential price decrease and damage to brand reputation. Obviously, there is also the economic impact that should by no means be ignored. For this reason, a previously developed econometric model that takes into account economic and counterfeiting phenomena variables was used in the empirical section of the paper. The aim was to determine the negative economic impacts of counterfeiting in relative and absolute terms of lost revenue in the sportswear, cosmetics and luxury bags markets. The interpretation show that revenue losses in on Croatian market due to trade in counterfeit goods in these categories reach almost 10%, consequently reducing job creation, tax revenues and consumer spending.

counterfeit goods ; intellectual property rights ; trade ; consumer safety

Indeksirano u: EconLit, JEL.