Joint EUIPO and European Commission report details enforcement results of IPRs

The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) have released an annual report on ‘EU enforcement of intellectual property rights: Results at the EU border and in the EU internal market 2020’. This is the first joint document following previously published separate reports, drawing on data on the detentions at the EU border reported by the customs authorities of all the Member States, through the EU-wide anti-counterfeit and anti-piracy information system (COPIS).

This edition provides the figures for the detentions of intellectual property rights (IPR) infringing goods and other related information in 2020. According to the report, the annual number of detentions of goods suspected of infringing an IPR by customs authorities at the EU border decreased significantly in 2020 compared to the previous year. A similar development can be observed with regard to the number of detained articles.

The COVID-19 crisis certainly had an impact on detentions results at the border for 2020 due to a combination of various factors, such as less trade in the first months of the pandemic, less goods crossing the borders as well as enforcement authorities facing difficulties to deliver controls as usual.