Trade in Counterfeit Products and the UK Economy
Fake Goods, Real Losses
The modern structure of the UK economy is largely based on knowledge, ideas and innovation and its well integrated global value chains. These factors help boost the country’s economic growth, but at the same time they make it highly susceptible to the risk of trade in counterfeit goods. This risk negatively affects UK rights holders, the UK government, and the reputation of UK firms. This report measures the direct, economic effects of counterfeiting on consumers, retail and manufacturing industry and governments in the United Kingdom. It does so from two perspectives: the impact on these three groups of imports of fake products into the UK, and the impact of the global trade in fake products on UK intellectual property rights holders.
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Conclusions and next steps
The findings of this study should help both public and private sector decision makers to better understand the nature and scale of the trade in counterfeit goods for the UK economy, and to develop appropriate, cohesive, and evidence-based policy responses. Furthermore, the methodology developed for this report can lend itself to a number of additional exercises. These could include other country studies, which could eventually lead to a benchmarking exercise. This methodology could be also re-used to determine the scale of harm caused by counterfeiting on the UK economy once the new data become available.
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