What are the Consequences of Counterfeiting and Trade in Pirated Products?
Counterfeit products: Here are some more insights from the event at Park Hyatt Hotel in Zurich following the question: Why do we need a product like ivault, that provides an even higher level of cybersecurity than any other technology can provide?
Our B2B product helps businesses secure their supply chain and protect their products from counterfeit and plagiarism. In addition, companies can track and manage their complete product life cycles easily through our application. In his presentation, CEO Arman takes a closer look at the counterfeiting market and the counterfeiters to assess today’s situation.
ivault verified: Protect products against counterfeit and piracy.
Counterfeit products: the counterfeiting market is booming
Trade in counterfeit and pirated goods is an extremely dynamic and constantly changing phenomenon, as the OECD (states. A study was conducted based on half a million seizures of pirated products, that shows: In 2016, 3.3% of world trade falls into the counterfeiting market, and almost 6.8% of EU imports. These figures emphasize once again the need for coordinated global action against piracy and trade in counterfeits.
In his presentation, CTO Martin Beyer explained how companies like Golisan can protect their products with ivault. The ivault blockchain makes it easy to detect counterfeit products that entered the supply chain before major damage may be done to costumers or companies’ reputations. The ivault verified label will thereby serve as an effective deterrent to counterfeiting and fraud (and then, of course, to theft as well, concerning our B2C platform to register and search for lost and stolen items via ivault.app).
So with growing brand awareness of ivault, more and more counterfeiters will avoid messing with companies that have their products labeled as verified by ivault, because – thanks to the benefits of blockchain technology – it can expose their criminal activity pretty quickly. For further information on how ivault works, you can read this article here.
But, returning to the figures mentioned above, how can it be that pirated products and fakes amount to that much of world trade and EU imports? In this video Arman explains not only why the counterfeiters’ market is growing so fast but who they are and what they do. Don’t forget to change the settings in the bottom right corner of the YouTube video to turn on English subtitles:
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How can we take action against counterfeiters and prevent at the same time?
To summarize what Arman says, the counterfeiters do not pay taxes nor invest in research and development. That is what the big companies do. So, one can easily conclude, how the counterfeiters display more growth than Belgium or Switzerland. As a consequence, this will cause job losses and an increase in government social expenditure.
From producer to end consumer the supply chain usually comprises wholesalers and retailers. But there can be many parallel imports and traders as well as several other distributors in the network. Somewhere in between a counterfeiter can infiltrate this system and channel counterfeit products into the process. In the internet there are more and more sneaky methods used to sell fake products. In both cases, these products usually do not comply with safety standards or limit values for ingredients (of medicine for example) leading to fatal incidences at worst.
But how can we avoid this with the ivault blockchain? The solution is simple: The producer prints a QR code onto the package of his product. Wholesalers, retailers, parallel distributors and traders have to scan this code with the ivault app in order to check if it is the original product. The information, that the product has arrived and has been scanned will be stored in the blockchain. The producer is able to check for example whether the product has been successfully shipped to and scanned by the wholesaler.
Thus the supply chain is completely transparent and data, once registered on the blockchain, cannot be manipulated or tampered with anymore. If suspicion arises, for example when a product is scanned but there is no information about it on the blockchain, you can easily narrow down the search for where the error occurred.
Arman is convinced that ivault will already achieve something outstanding by gaining control of 10% of the counterfeiting market. Would you like to know more about how ivault.app works? Leave a comment in the comment section below. We are looking forward to answering your questions.
If you have not yet subscribed to our ivault YouTube channel, you can click here to find Vault Security Systems AG on YouTube. We will soon be uploading more video content of CEO Arman Sarhaddar. You can also subscribe to the ivault newsletter here.
Patrizia Sinistra 
The growth in global trade and technology has positively affected many markets across the world but along with that, it has some major adverse effects as well. Business organizations spend a lot of money, time, and resources on protecting their brand and trademarks.