Every day, American companies see their valuable patents, copyrights, and trademarks ignored, misused, and blatantly ripped off by commercial pirates. While $ 35,000,000,000 may sound like a payment on our national debt, it is what Americans will probably pay for licensed products this year.
The rapidly growing problem of commercial piracy also threatens the health and safety of consumers, costs American jobs, and sabotages the ability of US businesses to compete. Explained Sen, Matthias: Commercial counterfeiting...has the potential for killing people. Commercial counterfeiting used to be limited to high fashion luxury items, but today...such things as prescription drugs and automobile parts have become targets for counterfeiting. For example, bogus brake drums have caused fatal car accidents.
Rip-offs of American intellectual property rights take different shapes, but the harm to American industry always is enormous. The variety of counterfeit goods is limited only by the fertile imagination of the commercial pirate. The auto parts industry alone estimates that it suffers $ 3,000,000 worth of damage yearly. One study estimated that trade in pirated goods accounts for two percent of total world trade!
Counterfeit Apples
The flood of pirated computers into world markets graphically shows what commercial pirates can do to a companys copyrights and patents. Apple II has the dubious honor of being the pirates favorite because it is so popular and has a vast number of software programs. According to Albert Eisenstat, vice president and general counsel of Apple, look-alike Apple Us began showing up in the Far East in early 1982, mostly assembled in tiny, household-sized shops. Counterfeit Apples, virtually identical to the real thing, reached the US market within a few months. Despite the Apple Companys registering trademarks and copyrights with Customs, filing lawsuits, and bringing an action before the International Trade Commission, the volume of phony Apples has grown. Large piratical firms invaded the US market, ready, willing, and able to make and distribute look-alike Apples by the thousands.
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