The European Commission released its latest statistics for goods suspected of infringing intellectual property rights intercepted in 2009 by EU Customs.
The most frequently detained articles include cigarettes (19%), labels (13%) and medicines (10%). As in Australia, more and more of the products detained by customs are consumer goods and not just luxury goods like in the past.
Although the number of goods suspected of infringing intellectual property rights in 2009 decreased to 118 million articles, (178 million articles in 2008), these figures have to be viewed in the context of the Global economic crisis which had a big impact on the amount of goods imported into the EU.
64% of the total amount of articles detained were identified as coming from China. Other countries of provenance include Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.
The number of cases in postal transport continued to grow strongly, presumably boosted by orders on the internet.
Click here to see the full report [PDF].