More Than Half of Counterfeit Products in Domestic E-commerce Distributed Systematically

by Kim Chulhyun

Published 01 Feb.2022 08:45(KST)

'2021 Global Counterfeit Goods Trend Report' Announcement

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Cheol-hyun] It has been confirmed that more than half of counterfeit products on domestic e-commerce platforms are being sold systematically by a small group of sellers. On the 1st, artificial intelligence (AI) company MarkVision announced the '2021 Global Counterfeit Goods Trend Report,' which states that over 50% of counterfeit products on domestic e-commerce platforms are sold systematically by the top 5% of sellers. Globally, the market dominance of the top 5% of sellers is about 40%. This is based on MarkVision's proprietary seller analysis system, which identified the correlation between counterfeit products and sellers.

This report was prepared based on counterfeit product data from global brands across various sectors such as clothing, bags, jewelry & accessories, and content·characters. More than 300 million cases were used for analysis. Specifically, clothing and bag products were commonly distributed across all countries, while luxury accessories and children's toys were prevalent in Japan and China, respectively. Southeast Asia, where counterfeit clothing and bags are most actively traded, accounted for 2.1 million detected cases last year, representing 46% of the total. South Korea and the United States also had counterfeit clothing and bags making up more than 50% of the total counterfeit products. In Japan, counterfeit luxury accessories accounted for 35%, while in China, children's toys made up 11% of all counterfeit products, significantly exceeding the global average.

The number of sophisticated counterfeit products that are difficult to determine whether they infringe intellectual property rights (IP) is continuously increasing. Last year, only 10% of counterfeit products were exact replicas of genuine products sold by brands, whereas counterfeit products newly created by individual sellers using stolen IP accounted for 90% of the total. Additionally, cases where official images were used to deceive consumers into believing the products were genuine accounted for nearly 34% of the total.

Lee In-seop, CEO of MarkVision, said, "As the global e-commerce market rapidly expands, trends and channels for counterfeit product distribution are also evolving quickly. For companies to further strengthen their market competitiveness in global marketplaces, it is necessary to establish a customized comprehensive IP management system based on practical data."