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Yearly Global Loss to Piracy, Counterfeiting Reaches N88 Trillion(AllAfrica Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Hewlett Packard (HP) Nigeria has revealed that businesses worldwide lose in excess of $550 billion, about N88 trillion each year due to counterfeiting and piracy. The company, which recently conducted a global research on intellectual property theft, said one in every ten information technology (IT) products and solutions sold is either counterfeit or pirated product. Counterfeiting has increasingly become a more organised, trans-border, and sophisticated criminal activity on a global scale, where operations take place in virtually every region and economy, the report stated. Marketing Manager, Hewlett Packard, in charge of West African market, Tolulope Lawani, who gave the hint, told THISDAY that counterfeit and pirated IT products do not only affect businesses negatively by short-changing customers of their hard earned money, but also have a very significant economic impact on government revenue by way of lost tax revenue, lost gross revenue, and job losses on a global and local scale, and in some cases pose risk to health and safety. In Nigeria, business have suffered so much loss to counterfeiting and piracy, especially software piracy where Microsoft is worst hit. Worried by the increasing rate of counterfeiting and piracy in Nigeria, Lawani said HP will next month organise anti-counterfeit conference in Abuja, aimed at creating awareness and understanding the impact of illicit trade in counterfeit products on Nigeria's economy. The two-day conference will discuss global industry best practices in combating piracy and counterfeiting. "Representatives from Microsoft, Unilever, GSK Pharmaceuticals, BAT and other premium brands have been invited by HP to discuss the increased threat that illicit trade in counterfeit products represents to the well-being and health of consumers," Lawani said. In technical parlance, piracy is imitation of the actual product or solution, reproduced at sub-standard grade to the detriment of consumer and the intellectual property owner, while counterfeiting are genuine products and solutions that are smuggled into a country or market where they are not originally meant to be sold. Both counterfeiting and piracy pose serious threat to lives and businesses, as well as economic loss to traders, buyers and the economy at large. In Nigeria, the software sector is a multi-billion naira industry, but so much is lost to piracy and counterfeiting. This has resulted in great economic loss to Nigeria, just as it is being experienced globally. According to Business Software Alliance (BSA) latest finding, an increase in the use of genuine software by one per cent contributes $73 billion to the global economy. How to curb software piracy in Nigeria was the focus of the recent 5th roundtable of the anti-counterfeiting collaboration of Nigeria (ACC) held in Lagos early in the year. The Head, Corporate Affairs, Microsoft Anglophone West Africa, Ijeoma Abazie, had identified the benefits of curbing software piracy to include increased jobs, tax revenues and safety as opposed to the dangers associated with software piracy. Owing to software piracy and its attendant risks of insecurity, the recent International Data Corporation (IDC) statistics show that consumers globally will spend 1.5 billion hours and $22 billion identifying and recovering from the impact of malware, and businesses all over the world will be spending $114 billion to deal with the effects of malware-induced cyber-attacks. Copyright This Day. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). |