Counterfeit Crackdown Prevented 420 Billion Won in Damages... KIPO Credits Online Monitoring Team's Significant Role

Major Cases of ASEAN Online Counterfeit Goods Response. Provided by the Korean Intellectual Property Office

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] The Overseas Online Counterfeit Goods Home Monitoring Team (hereinafter referred to as the Monitoring Team) has achieved a prevention effect of approximately 420 billion KRW in damages through crackdowns on overseas online marketplaces selling counterfeit goods.

According to the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) on the 19th, the Monitoring Team, launched in August last year, detected and blocked about 144,000 posts selling counterfeit goods on overseas online malls over five months until December. This prevented counterfeit products imitating domestic companies' products from being sold abroad in advance.

The damage prevention effect achieved through blocking sales posts reached 426.3 billion KRW. This figure was estimated by multiplying the average genuine product sales price per company (63,000 KRW), the number of deleted posts (144,000), and the average sales quantity (47 units based on China).

Among the detected posts, K-POP goods and fashion accessories accounted for nearly 70% of the total, and by country, the highest number of counterfeit product detections and blocks were in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Singapore, in that order.

Earlier, KIPO launched the Monitoring Team through securing a third supplementary budget last year. The main purpose was to strengthen responses to the distribution of counterfeit goods targeting six ASEAN countries?Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines?as well as Taiwan.

Creating non-face-to-face and digital jobs was also an additional reason for launching the Monitoring Team. Reflecting this, KIPO currently selects and operates the Monitoring Team with about 200 members, including women who have experienced career interruptions and multicultural families.

In particular, this year, since the budget necessary for operating the Monitoring Team was secured in the main budget, KIPO expects that the continuous operation of the Monitoring Team will come closer to minimizing the damage caused by counterfeit goods distribution to domestic export companies.

Jung Yeon-woo, Director of the Industrial Property Protection Cooperation Bureau at KIPO, said, “Compared to the short-term operation of the Monitoring Team with supplementary budget, the effect of blocking counterfeit goods distributed online was very significant,” and added, “KIPO plans to strengthen government support to activate the operation of the Monitoring Team and enhance the blocking of counterfeit goods distribution.”