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The impact of the sale of pirated designs in the clothing industry causes losses of up to 26 billion euros.
In 2019, piracy went from 2.5 percent to 3.3 percent of total world trade.
China is the main market for the sale and distribution of counterfeit or ‘pirate’ items.
Electronic commerce has been growing in recent years throughout the world, and people currently buy everything from food to cleaning supplies in these media. This impact makes platforms such as Amazon victims of piracy, as reported today in various complaints from writers and authors who ask to analyze and prevent false or ‘pirated’ versions of their works from circulating on the eCommerce website.
A study published by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) revealed that in 2019 piracy went from 2.5 percent to 3.3 percent of total world trade, qualifying this growth, for the first time, as “frankly alarming”. In the opinion of the EUIPO, part of the increase in the period is due to the greater participation of registered trademarks and protected designs, which means that a greater number of complaints are filed in the various jurisdictions.
According to another study by the US Department of Commerce, US creative industries generate approximately 775 billion dollars annually in export merchandise and create 40 million jobs in the country. In this sense, the report presents a list of countries that supply piracy, where China leads for having all kinds of fake items, from luxury brands in fashion and watches, spare parts and spare parts, to those that put the consumer health, such as cosmetics, medicines and alcoholic beverages.
Authors ask Amazon to stop piracy
Several complaints from authors detail that Amazon is being inundated with counterfeit versions of their books and assert that a plan is needed to combat literary fraudsters.
The fake books, sold by third parties through Amazon, range from e-texts to some hardcovers in all genres, But the problem is especially widespread in the case of textbooks, whose sky-high prices attract fraudsters.
Matthew Hefti, a novelist and lawyer, detailed to The Post that “The harm to perpetrators is very real”after finding counterfeit versions of his own book on Amazon.
He also explains that the end result is that readers are stuck with unreadable books that leak ink or fall apart, while authors and publishers lose revenue to publishing ‘pirates’.
Amazon, however, keeps a cut of third-party sales, regardless of whether the books they ship are real or fake, giving the company no incentive to crack down on counterfeits.
According to Brand Finance, Amazon ranks second in the industry with the highest brand value globally in 2022, with 350 thousand 273 million dollars.
Along those same lines, Martin Kleppmann, a computer science researcher and academic, noted that he has seen one-star Amazon reviews of his textbook, with angry customers complaining about being unreadable or having missing pages and other quality issues:
“This book is very poorly printed,” reads an angry review of Kleppmann’s book.
“Pages print overlapping,” says another review.
How does Amazon respond to the publishing industry?
Faced with various complaints from authors and customers, an Amazon spokeswoman, identified as Julia Lee, said in a statement to The Post: “We prioritize customer and author trust and continually monitor and have measures in place to prevent products from being listed. prohibited”.
The eCommerce company spent more than $900 million worldwide and employed more than 12,000 people to protect customers from counterfeiting, fraud and other forms of abuse.
Amazon typically requires authors and publishers to scan the site for counterfeit versions of their own books, then fight through layers of bureaucracy to weed out counterfeits, according to intellectual property attorney Katie Sunstrom.
“The burden is on the seller for Amazon to stop infringers and counterfeiters from selling in their system,” Sunstrom told The Post.
And it is that, really and unfortunately, piracy is everywhere, This is the case of Crocs, which in July took legal action against a store for selling pirated versions of his famous sandals, demonstrating the importance of defending design in fashion. In conclusion, this type of action is considered a crime throughout the world, where laws are increasingly stronger against copyright in all messages.
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