The EUIPO, in cooperation with the Centre for International Intellectual Property Studies (CEIPI) and the Bureau of Theoretical and Applied Economics (BETA) at the University of Strasbourg, have recently disclosed a report on the results of the study designated as “Phase 5: Modus Operandi of Serious and Organised Crime.”
In this report, they state that Intellectual Property (IP-related) crime is linked to various forms of criminal activity, such as drug trafficking, money laundering, cybercrime, terrorism and fraud.
“(…) Through the application of various visual mapping exercises, a number of noteworthy patterns, commonalities, and trends emerged among the IPR crimes examined.”
These conclusions were subdivided into categories of different IPR and IPR-infringement related activities, from which the following information was extracted, among others:
- The origin of the infringing goods was often the most difficult element to identify;
- As a rule, producers of IPR infringing goods do not directly delivered them to the final customer;
- It was found that legal access to copyrighted content is abused for infringing purposes;
- An observable trend in this section was that infringing business models tend to be more sophisticated, as they adapt their modus operandi to a greater number of targeted victims.
Access here to the complete study report.
