The causes and consequences of crimes involving intellectual property rights

It is no coincidence that joint projects and collaborations between national institutions have recently become more frequent, such as The Patent Office and GDBOP, supranational organizations such as EUIPO and EUROPOL, and even the anti-counterfeiting trends in the catwalks of global fashion events like Fashion week. 

Intellectual property rights (IPR) violations and crimes refer to the theft, infringement, and unauthorized use of intellectual property - copyright, industrial designs, trademarks, patents and others; as well as crimes related to trade secrets. The most common among these acts are: 

• counterfeiting (production, import, distribution, storage and sale of goods that are misleadingly distributed under a given trademark, but without the consent of the owner or user thereof); and  

• piracy (unauthorized copying, use, reproduction and distribution of materials protected by intellectual property rights). 

Currently, both acts are criminalized in our national legislation (within the Criminal Code), and our legal system is one of the few that also resorts to administrative-criminal liability for minor cases. Unfortunately, violations and crimes related to PRIS are in full swing, because: 

• aim to satisfy and saturate consumerism and global demand for goods and/or services at the lowest possible prices, and thus rely on this type of consumer behavior as a driver; 

• The subjects benefit, on the one hand, from the information blackout and, on the other hand, from the information overload of the users. 

The above factors lead to serious damage in key sectors of the economy and healthcare, as they affect not only the circulation of goods and "small transactions" such as the sale of clothes, but also threaten public relations in healthcare, the food industry, the exchange of goods and services in industrial quantities, etc. This greatly shakes the economy of the countries and the EU and leads to large-scale property and non-property damage to the detriment of the persons whose rights are violated.  

In order to avoid socially dangerous acts involving intellectual property rights, our team advises every person to consider preventive measures – such as monitoring, and good management of their intangible assets, as well as being proactive when noticing an irregularity. If you need assistance, IPfabrika is available – contact us.  

Graphic: A joint EUIPO-Europol strategic analysis report produced under EMPACT - October 2024, page 10
Image: Canva Pro