Cost of Piracy Overestimated Says OECD, Underestimated Says ICC

Steve Whitehouse of Thomson Financial reports about an unpublished Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) study which puts trade losses in 2005 at up to 200 billion US dollar, considerably lower than the 600 billion US dollars estimated by the International Chamber of Commerce. Read Whitehouse's article via Forbes.com here.

US officials estimate the costs for companies [1] around the globe. of China’s counterfeit and piracy exports as between US $ 50 [2] and 60 billion [3] a year.

However, objective statistics about IP in China are a great challenge for scholars. That's why IP Dragon proposed to use the Enforcement/Infringement ratio, for it does not give absolute figures, but at least gives an indication of whether the situation improves or deteriorates, read more here.

China is not the only one to blame for its lack of transparency. Trade associations and lobby groups have their own agenda. Some argue that Business Software Alliance has misrepresented the facts [4] or that Motion Picture Association of America claims a right to misrepresent the facts [5].

Notes:
[1] This excludes the lost tax revenues for governments, lost employment, and extra costs for health and safety.
[2] “U.S. officials say its exports cost legitimate producers worldwide up to $50 billion a year in lost potential sales,” Associated Press, ‘China’s piracy hurting its own industries’, July 7, 2006, available at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13617619.
[3] “International companies are losing more than $60 billion a year because of piracy in China, according to the U.S. government,” ‘U.S., EU to Fight Counterfeits From China, Russia’, Bloomberg, June 19, 2006, available at: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000100&sid=aTSjqiimKzYc&refer=germany.
[4] “BSA or just BS”, Economist, May 19, 2005, available at: http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_PJJPQNS.
[5] Ryan Singel, “Copyright Groups Continue Fight Against Anti-Lying and Spying Bill-Updated”, Wired Thread Level, April 11, 2007, available at: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/04/copyright_group.html.

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China's Efforts Against Counterfeit Products That Kill

Feng Tao of Xinhua reports the item communicated by the Ministry of Public Security that the PSB dealt with 4,600 cases of counterfeit and inferior products between January and November 2006. Police arrested more than 5,000 people. The question unanswered in this article is how many of them got prosecuted, and of those, how many got fined or a prison sentence?

Feng also wrote about Qiqihar No. 2 Pharmaceutical Co., that manufactured tainted durgs that killed 11 people in Guangdong province, in May 2006, due to acute kidney failure. Read more here.

China Radio International runs with the Xinhua story that China seized 9.06 billion counterfeit brand cigarettes, another product that kills, counterfeit or not. Law enforcement agencies arrested 6,334 people with 2,313 prosecuted, said administration spokesperson Zhang Xiulian of China's State Tobacco Monopoly Administration. Read more here. Again, how many of them got fined or a prison sentence?

Then again these cases may not have been brought before a judge, yet.

A related question is: do more litigations, have any result?
I wrote about it in the article: More IPR Ligitation in China is Nice, But What About The Enforcement Ratio.
In short: more litigations do not necessarily mean that infringements are on their way back. In that article I point to an objective way of measuring the impact litigations have on infringements, by using foreign customs to gather information about the number of infringements. This implies, however, that when customs improve their investigation system, like the US Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did, read here, the number of infringements from one year to the next should be adjusted.

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