Every time you buy an illegal copy of a counterfeit product, you are not only contributing to a criminal practice, but you are hitting families who live off the companies that have invested in manufacturing quality goods and you are feeding criminal gangs.

The scourge of counterfeiting has numbers: 50,000 jobs are destroyed every year in Spain. The economic losses are close to 7,000 million, the equivalent of 146 euros per inhabitant. Clothing, medicines, cosmetics, wines and telephones… Furthermore, Spain is the second country in the European Union that intentionally purchases the most counterfeit products, behind Bulgaria.

These are some of the figures, prepared by the EUIPO, that came out yesterday in the debates at the European Industrial Property Forum that took place in Barcelona, ​​in an event organized by Andema, the Association for the Defense of Trademarks.

The different administrations that struggle daily with this problem offered their testimony yesterday. “According to the studies we have, the money generated by counterfeiting and piracy in general is comparable to that of arms or drug trafficking,” said Tomás Domínguez-Martín of Europol.

“Often we only look at the manta top. But it’s just the surface. Behind it there are criminal organizations that often feed on illegal immigration,” said José Luis Gómez, from the National Police.

Lorenzo Gómez, from the Civil Guard, admits that sometimes it is difficult to convince the judicial authorities that a fake SpongeBob underpants is an indication of a crime, but we must remember that “the victim of counterfeiting is a commercial company that creates jobs that families depend on.” Jordi Moreno, from the Guàrdia Urbana, defended that the presence of top mantas has been decreasing in the Barcelona area in recent years and that now specific interventions are carried out, also with plainclothes agents.

Santiago López, from the Mossos d’Esquadra, stressed that illegal purchases have now moved from the street to mobile phones, due to electronic commerce, which forces intervention in increasingly faster times.

“In a digital world, in which the most valuable assets of companies are intangible, there can be no hesitation in granting these rights solid protection,” concluded the president of Andema, Rosa Tous. The meeting, attended by 200 professionals, aims to consolidate itself in the Catalan capital as a reference annual event.