VDMA : Product Piracy Study 2014

The VDMA (Verband Deutscher Maschinen- und Anlagenbau e.V.) is a German engineering association which is based in Frankfurt and has political offices in Brussels and Berlin. With over 3.100 member companies the VDMA is one of the largest industrial associations in Europe. The VDMA covers the entire engineering sector from component manufacturers, machine builders, plant erectors, system suppliers and system integrators through to service providers. It published its Product Piracy Study 2014 in its 7th edition this year. The data was collected between February 3rd and March 10th 2014 among VDMA company members. This year 337 companies from all over Europe took part at the study. With 71 % of companies affected, the threat has reached a new record high in the mechanical engineering industry. Larger companies with more than 500 employees are particularly frequent targets. The damage to German mechanical engineering businesses in 2014 is estimated at 7.9 billion Euros. Revenue in this dimension would represent approx. 38,000 new jobs in mechanical engineering. As you can see below, the producers of woodworking machines are particularly frequent victims of product pirates. Other preferred victims are the textile and agricultural machinery. Most of the counterfeiters imitate components. Followed by design imitations but, also copying entire machines has become very popular. China is world’s single largest market for counterfeit products. Companies take care and take preventative measures to protect themselves against counterfeiters. Therefore, more than 80 percent of the companies rely on registering intellectual property rights, for example, in the form of patents or trademarks.

When counterfeits are discovered by the owner of the original products, 46 % will take legal action.

For more detailed information and the full report including charts, overviews and other statistics please see: http://www.vdma.org/article/-/articleview/3842960