Counterfeiting on the Internet

A conference organised by Assorologi in cooperation with Convey, a company specialising in 'web intelligence', was held in Milan on 6 February. The subject of the conference was precisely counterfeiting on the Internet with regard to watch brands. The conference was opened by a video-message from the President of Confcomemrcio, Dr. Carlo Sangalli, while speakers included Lawyer Daniela Mainini, President of the CNAC - National Anti-Counterfeiting Council, the Hon. Giovanni Fava, President of the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission on Counterfeiting, and Prof. Avv. Cesare Galli, consultant to the Ministry of Economic Development on Industrial Property. The Convey research was carried out on 50 watch brands, and highlighted rather worrying areas of criticality, such as how 35% of traditional web pages illegally use brands to sell fake products, or how on average in the first 100 pages of a search engine dedicated to a particular watch brand, as many as 32 are vehicles for counterfeiting. Another finding of the Convey research is that three out of four counterfeit pages belong to e-commerce sites, while one out of six belong to blogs.

The analysis focused on 50 important national and international watchmaking brands and in particular on the following: A.Lange & Söhne, Alain Silberstein, Audemars Piguet, Baume & Mercier, Bell & Ross, Blancpain, Breguet, Breil, Breitling, Bulova, Cartier, Chopard, Chronoswiss, Citizen, Corum, Ebel, Eberhard & Co, Festina, Franck Muller, Gérald Genta, Girard-Perregaux, Hamilton, Hublot, IWC, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Jaquet Droz, JeanRichard, Locman, Longines, Montblanc, Movado, Omega, Panerai, Patek Philippe, Paul Picot, Piaget, Rado, Raymond Weil, Richard Mille, Roger Dubuis, Rolex, Seiko, Swatch, Tag Heuer, Timex, Tissot, Tudor, Ulysse Nardin, Vacheron Constantin, Zenith. These brands, based on target market and price levels, were divided into no. four segments/classes (Luxury; High; Medium; Basic), so as to improve the possibility of effective comparison on the results generated by the multiple metrics adopted.

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