The Museum of Counterfeiting, Paris

 

If you have seen the Eiffel Tower, floated down the Seine and visited the Louvre, it’s high time to visit compact and beautifully housed Museum of Counterfeiting.

The Museum of Counterfeiting was created in 1951; it is located in a private mansion, on the ground floor of an elegant, 19th century building in Paris. It is didactic and allows visitors to get information about counterfeiting and its impact on the international economy; it makes them aware about the importance of intellectual property and explains the legal sanctions that exist.

It is a unique museum which shows a large range of fake and authentic items so that visitor can learn how to detect imitations: bronzes of Rodin’s, perfumes, tobacco, dictionaries, software, CDs and DVDs, toys, spare parts, household electrical appliances, cleaning products, textile, tanning, fake sunglasses dishes, pens, products to USB keys, sporting goods and pharmaceuticals – even including bottled water, tomato ketchup and liquid gas. The Museum offers a wide-ranging, intriguing and rather disturbing display of the enormous extent of counterfeiting.

Visitors quickly learn that crooks, and counterfeiting, have been around for a long time. The oldest counterfeit products on display, dating from around 200 BC, are stoppers used to seal amphorae filled with wine being transported from Italy to Gaul. A genuine stopper, with the wine merchant’s mark, is shown next to its counterfeit used by an ancient Roman free-rider hoping to cash in on someone else’s market success. Over 2,000 years later, the problem is still with us. It is estimated1 that 7 to 10 percent of global trade derives from counterfeits, costing the world economy around US$ 492 billion a year.

Throughout the Museum, authentic goods are displayed with their corresponding imitations – obtained following customs seizures or court judgments or settlements – to highlight the differences between genuine products and their illegal and sub-standard doppelgangers.

The Museum’s message underscores the negative, widespread and potentially dangerous impact of counterfeiting on producers, consumers and the economy: not only discouraging innovation, depriving right holders of income and supporting organized crime, but also threatening health and safety.

It notes that badly made counterfeit toys are, at best, soon damaged (“False Barbies” one captions warns, “quickly go bald”); at worst, they incorporate inflammable materials or toxic substances, such as lead paint, or have small breakable parts that present a choking hazard.

The dangers are many and varied, counterfeit products by their nature elude any health or safety controls. The Museum runs the gamut, from that do not adequately protect the eyes to counterfeit car and airplane parts that risk failing with disastrous consequences, and sub-standard electrical appliances that present myriad domestic dangers. Fake medicines are a particularly pernicious and perennial problem, often containing no, or insufficient, active ingredients or even incorporating toxic elements. It is estimated that they make up from 10 to over 30 percent of the market in developing countries.

The Museum recently opened a new wing, dedicated to copyright crime. Its exhibits range from fake statuettes of Rodin, Dali and Giacometti – often showing counterfeiting techniques, such as the application of acid followed by tinted wax to give bronze a quick patina – to pirated DVDs and CDs. It also highlights the dramatic escalation in IP crime fuelled by the Internet, and its profound effect on the creative industries.

One of the Museum displays notes that an estimated 40 million counterfeit Swiss watches are produced each year – twice the number of genuine watches “made in Switzerland” annually.

The museum aims to raise awareness and stresses the need for industrial protection.

Exercise 4. Read the text again and write its summary using the following plan:

1. The location of the museum.

2. Goods displayed in the museum.

3. Copyright infringement.

4. Counterfeit watch.

5. Threats of the fakes.

6. How not to mistake a fake.

7. Protecting intellectual property rights.

Exercise 5. Read Text 3 to answer the questions:

1. What does the abbreviation IPR stand for?

2. What does the abbreviation TRIPS stand for?

3. How has the change in technology affected the everyday practice of counterfeiting and IPR?

4. What legislative measures on IPR enforcement are underway in the world?

5. What kind of organization is CAP?

6. What is economic impact of counterfeiting on the global economy?

7. Customs is on front line in combating counterfeiting, isn’t it? What facts prove this point?

8. What programs has the WCO developed?

Text 3