Customs with confiscated goods
Confiscated goods.
Forgeries - a well paid but dangerous business
Making forgeries of widely known brands is a serious business in Macedonia. According to the rough projection of the experts, the state and domestic and foreign firms loose around 800 million dollars.
By Goran Rizaov and Aleksandar Manasiev
Posted September 19, 2009
The reason for doing forgery is very simple - easy profit without having to pay for advertisement. But, the forged goods don’t only damage the big companies or the state. First of all, the products are also dangerous to human health, they are unsecure and grant no garanties as for the quality.
The most dangerous business is the forgery of medicines and imitation of some famous pharmaceutical brands. According to the data of the World Health Organisation, every tenth medicine in the world is a fake. The percentage od these kind of medicine in developing countries, such as Macedonia reaches 50 percent.
Besides the forgery of the world known brands, in Macedonia there can also be found forgeries of the domestic famous macedonian products. Falsificators show great skill, making copies of these originals at the same time being cautious in order not to get the falsificat revealed.
In Macedonian courts there are several pending court cases among the firms which are suing eachother for stealling intellectual property and the required damage compensation is expressed in millions.
The stories were published in Macedonian daily Dnevnik on July 3rd, 4th and 6th 2009. To read them in Macedonian, please click on the links below, to read them in English, please go to the RTF-files below.
Stealing_intellectual_property-first_part.docStealing_intellectual_property_in_Macedonia-second_part.docStealing_intellectual_property-third_part.doc