EU Customs enforcement Counterfeiting Report 2013

The European Commission published its Annual Report 2013 on EU customs enforcement of intellectual property rights on 31 July 2014. The annual report contains statistical information about detentions made under customs procedure at the EU external borders.     The report this year shows that counterfeit goods are a danger to different markets and emphasizes the role of customs authorities in stopping such products from illegally entering the EU. Customs authorities at EU borders detained nearly 36 million goods suspected of infringement with an estimated value of more than 760 million euros. Clothing (12%) and medicines (10%) are among the top categories of goods detained (see below). Nearly 87.000 detention cases were registered by consumers, most of which were incidents involving small parcels in express and postural traffic, most probably a result of internet sales. China remains to be the leading source of infringing goods overall, since 66% of all goods detained in 2013 originated there (see below). Turkey is the leading source of fake perfumes and cosmetics, and Egypt for food products.   As in previous years, the majority of articles detained by customs in 2013 was suspected of infringing a Community or national trademark and covered all product sectors. Around 90 %of all detained goods were either destroyed or a court case was initiated to determine the infringement. In almost 8% of the cases, the goods were released because they appeared to be non-infringed original goods or because no action was undertaken by the right holder after receiving notification by the Customs authorities. The full report can be found under the following link: http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/resources/documents/customs/customs_controls/counterfeit_piracy/statistics/2014_ipr_statistics_en.pdf