Cialis, Apple and Nike 'top pirated brands in 2012'

The World Customs Organisation has published its first ever combined review of data on illicit trade, revealing that counterfeit accessories and clothing were the items most seized by border control agencies in 2012.

The 2012 Illicit Trade Report, which will be published annually by the WCO from now on, is a break from tradition as the body previously produced three separate reports on drugs, intellectual property rights (IPR) and tobacco.

The IPR) section of the report looks at data from almost 60,000 individual seizures of counterfeit and pirated goods between 2011 and 2012 which collectively accounted for 211 million items weighing in at 33 million kilos.

The US was by far the most active country in reporting cases, accounting for more than a third of the total last year, followed by Germany (12 per cent), Saudi Arabia (11 per cent), Italy (8 per cent) and Spain (6 per cent).

China was by far the most common country of origin, and was the source for 43.5 per cent of cases, followed by Hong Kong with 23.7 per cent. India ranked third with 3 per cent, ahead of Turkey, Australia, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Breakdown by commodity category

Accessories such as handbags and wallets accounted for almost 16 per cent of all seizures by WCO member agencies last year - roughly the same percentage as in 2011 - with a retail value of $427m, down from more than $710m a year earlier.  Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Gucci, Chanel and Ray Ban featured prominently amongst the top counterfeited brands.

Clothing ranked second with a little under 15 per cent of the total and a value of $111m, with Louis Vuitton, Adidas, Gucci, Lacoste, Chanel and Burberry all under attack.

Watches featured very highly in value terms, accounting for 26 per cent of the total worth seizures worth more than $390m thanks to the high proportion of premium products such as Rolex, although made up less than 6 per cent of seizures by volume.

Pharmaceuticals ranked highly at over 10 per cent of all seizures, up from 7 per cent in 2011, although the total value of intercepted goods in this category fell from $22m to $14m. As expected erectile dysfunction brands - Eli Lilly's Cialis and Pfizer's Viagra - were the most copied. WCO Secretary General Kunio Mikuriya writes in the report that there has been a "continuous rise in the trafficking of fake and counterfeit pharmaceutical products that are highly dangerous to human health, largely sourced through the Internet." 

Mobile phones and accessories followed fractionally behind medicines accounting for 9.5 per cent of total seizures in 2012 with a value of around $21m, well down on the $116m seized the prior year. Apple and Nokia were the most counterfeited brands in terms of the number of seizures.

Other electronic appliances took the number three spot across all commodities by value at a whopping $170m, up from $60m in 2011, and accounted for 7.6 per cent of total interceptions. Once again, prominent companies such as Sony and Casio bore the brunt of the criminal activity. 

Transportation and spare parts - which included items such as batteries, bearings, brake pads etc - made up 2 per cent of total seizures last year with a value of $19m, down from $31m in 2011. Chinese battery brand Tianqiu topped the list by the number of items intercepted, mainly resulting from one huge seizure in China last year involving 6.3m units.

Among the food and beverage sectors, foodstuffs accounted for 1.3 per cent of cases - valued at $6.9m, while somewhat surprisingly fake alcoholic beverages made up a fraction of a per cent with a value of just $118,000.

"It is noteworthy that despite the fact that the total number of reported cases declined, cases related to health and safety (pharmaceutical products, transportation and spare parts, foodstuffs) increased in terms of the number of cases," says the report.

The report concludes that "while faced with a daunting task, customs is achieving successes in matching the challenges posed by illicit trade," said Mikuriya.