Editorial: Dealing with fake products

Many people have DVDs or CDs which, when they bought them from a mall or a bazaar, they knew by the price and perhaps the quality of the packaging were unauthorized copies of the original. On our computers at home or in the office, we may have programs, maybe an entire operating system, which we know are illegal copies. They work fine, but because we know we paid far less than the normal retail price, we also know that they are clones, not the real thing.
So how many of us would walk into a shop and pick up something valuable and walk out with it, without paying? How many would break into a neighbor’s house and take whatever we fancied ? Not many of us surely.
Yet everything listed here is the same — they are all theft. The difference is that while physically taking something with your hands from a shop display or a house you are visiting, actually feels like stealing, pressing a few buttons on a computer keyboard or handing over some cash to a trader in fakes do not actually feel like robbery. But they all are.
Now we have a new Unfair Competition Law (UCL) which will be used to crack down on fakes, pirated copies and counterfeits. Many legitimate traders will be breathing a sigh of relief. As long ago as 2005, there was a groundswell of protest among business people at the sheer quantity of pirated goods that were flooding into the country. Indeed according to GCC figures, the Kingdom is in relative terms by far the largest market in the club for counterfeit products, ranging from perfumes and handbags to designer clothing, music, software and even automotive and aviation spare parts.
It might seem smart to some people to walk around with a fake Rolex Oyster that cost a fraction of the price of the real thing. After all, both watches tell the time, which you probably have more accurately on your mobile phone anyway. And someone who can afford the real thing is probably wearing it in part for appearances. So why should not some student with SR 50 to spare at a bazaar stall try for the same effect ?
Yet in the end, it comes down to something more than stealing intellectual copyright, which at first sight does not really matter to most of us. It actually comes down to making all our lives more expensive. Anyone who manufactures anything, from a computer program to a perfume, dedicates time and money to its development and works out over how many years it can get back that investment. Meanwhile from ongoing profits, businesses are also funding research and development into new products, which will generally add to the world’s well being and enjoyment. If, however, a significant portion of expected revenue flows is being siphoned off by manufacturers of fakes in the Far East and elsewhere, who are organized on a truly massive scale, then ultimately the genuine article is bound to cost more. Moreover, improvements and enhancements will take longer to come through to the market. Worse from the retailer’s point of view, if sales are being lost to phony goods, then he will have to raise his prices to cover his own costs. Thus everyone is losing by supporting this illegal activity.
Now that the authorities have the Unfair Competition Law, they should start using it decisively. There have been warnings enough to illegal traders and wholesalers about importing and selling counterfeit goods. Now we need to see some prosecutions.
There should certainly be no more cases like that reported recently of a trader who discovered that he was being investigated by officials. He went to see them and asked to be given a fortnight to get rid of his counterfeit stock. The official concerned agreed. Yet any sensible person would ask how was the trader doing to get rid of his stock ? For sure he was not burning it out in his yard. He was going to sell it on to someone else, thus keeping it in circulation.
What should have happened was that his entire holding of phony goods should have been seized there and then, crushed and tipped into a landfill. That is the way to treat fakes.