On 20th September 2018, journalists from 15 Moldovan media outlets participated in an offline meeting entitled "Impact of intellectual property rights infringements on society", organized by the State Agency for Intellectual Property (AGEPI), together with the EU funded Project “Support to Enforcement of the Intellectual Property Rights” in the Republic of Moldova.
The Director General of AGEPI, Ms. Lilia Bolocan, opened the meeting by speaking about registration procedures, legal protection and use of intellectual property objects in our country.
EU Project Experts then talked to journalists about intellectual property rights infringements, including the impact of counterfeiting and piracy on business and society. According to Mr. Kenny Wright, Deputy Team Leader of the Project, in 2016 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported that the trade in counterfeit and pirate goods is the most valuable illicit trade in the world, beating narcotics into second place..
Mr. Florin Alexandru, EU Project expert, revealed that there is a global trend towards the migration of infringements into the online space. He also stated that counterfeiting and piracy affect not only creative industries, but also pharmaceutical and medical devices, textiles, cosmetics, safety devices (fire alarms, bearings, airbags), pesticides and even agricultural seeds. According to the expert, who cited the most recent Business Software Alliance Study (BSA) study, the global commercial value of unlicensed software is about $46.3 billion, and 33% of unlicensed operating systems contain viruses.
Speaking about the dimensions of piracy, he noted that 53% of all piracy takes place on unlicensed platforms, 5% of piracy through P2P torrents, 20% of pirated movies are distributed by torrent, 83% of site visits with pirate content come from mobile devices and 49% of young people aged 16-24 are ripping from Youtube.
The event concluded with an awards ceremony for journalists who won an AGEPI contest on intellectual property issues.
The EU Project ”Support to Enforcement of the Intellectual Property Rights” in the Republic of Moldova is funded by the European Union and implemented by a Consortium of Archidata LLC (Italy), European Profiles S.C. (Greece) and Business and Strategies in Europe (Belgium). The project has a duration of two years and ends in November 2018.
