Counterfeiting as corporate externality : intellectual property crime and global insecurity

Mackenzie, S. (2010) Counterfeiting as corporate externality : intellectual property crime and global insecurity. Crime, Law and Social Change, 54(1), pp. 21-38. (doi: 10.1007/s10611-010-9246-5)

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Abstract

Corporate negative externalities occur when corporations place some of the costs of their profit-seeking activity onto society. This paper suggests that the current global problem of intellectual property crime is such an externality, and that it has not been recognised as such because corporations present product counterfeiting and piracy as crimes which reduce their revenue, rather than as predictable side effects of corporate production and merchandising, including branding activity, which have considerable socially deleterious consequences. It is argued that corporate actors are responsible for the socially harmful effects of the global counterfeiting problem in the following respects. Branding, advertising, and other corporate activities drive the market for goods which have a fashion value over and above their use value. While corporations ‘create’ this desire, they cannot prevent it being applied to the desire for fake or replica goods. Outsourcing of corporate production activities to developing countries to take advantage of cheap manufacturing and labour costs presents considerable opportunities to producers in those countries to copy and distribute the goods in an unauthorised way. Serious measures are not taken against product counterfeiters by rights-holding corporations, since market expediency dictates that the costs of counterfeiting are not so adverse to corporations to incentivise them to change their business methods. Counterfeit and pirated goods cause a range of social harms above and beyond the spuriously-costed financial damage corporate rights-holders suggest they suffer - these include the health and safety issues created by some fake goods, and the creation and maintenance of highly profitable organised crime activity in international markets for fake goods.

This paper arose out of research undertaken for an overview of global trends in faking published as the chapter ‘Fakes’, in Brookman, Maguire, Pierpoint and Bennett (eds), Handbook on Crime (Willan, 2010). There is some overlap between the two texts. The core argument of this paper – of IPC as externality - appears here for the first time.

Item Type:Articles
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Mackenzie, Professor Simon
Authors: Mackenzie, S.
Subjects:K Law > K Law (General)
H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
College/School:College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Sociology Anthropology and Applied Social Sciences
Journal Name:Crime, Law and Social Change
Publisher:Springer Netherlands
ISSN:1573-0751
ISSN (Online):1573-0751
Published Online:01 July 2010

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