Economic resources on intellectual property rights (IPR) infringement

This page provides resources for understanding the nature and impact of counterfeit goods and piracy in the United States. It spotlights recent economic analysis and present two landscape studies commissioned by the United States Patent and Trademark Office's (USPTO) Office of the Chief Economist (OCE) that summarize the current state of understanding and evidence on counterfeiting and piracy. Second, a customized resource tool allows access to over 238 of the latest directives, reports, and policy documents on counterfeit and piracy from 13 executive branch and independent agencies of the U.S. government. For those interested in congressional materials, please visit Congress’s site.

Economic analysis

Recent studies related to counterfeits or piracy, including working papers, journal articles, and USPTO reports conducted by OCE.

Overview landscape studies on piracy and counterfeits

Two recent landscape studies commissioned by the USPTO’s Office of the Chief Economist summarize the current state of understanding and evidence on counterfeiting and piracy.

IPR infringement resource tool

The resource tool provides access to a library of information produced by U.S. government agencies. Topics include bilateral and multilateral trade agreements with intellectual property (IP) provisions, and annual (or other periodic) reports produced by federal IP enforcement agencies. 

Link to resource tool

Relevant links

For additional information on IPR infringement, visit the following links.

Graph showing the Impact of 2001 piracy shock on R&D spending and IP filings by at-risk software firms
Source: Bradley & Kolev (2021), plotting two-year moving averages using data from COMPUSTAT, the U.S. Copyright Office, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. 

Spotlight

Impact of 2001 piracy shock on R&D spending and IP filings by at-risk software firms

The figure to the right presents the impact of the 2001 launch of BitTorrent, a major expansion of online piracy, on innovative activity in the software industry. Compared to the control group, software firms at risk of piracy increased their R&D spending and filings of copyrights, trademarks, and patents by 50% or more following the 2001 piracy shock. This suggests that greater rates of innovation may be an effective response to digital piracy. Read more about this study in the USPTO Working Paper on Software Piracy and IP Management Practices.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Past spotlight

Top three producers/importers of counterfeit
Figure 2 exhibits the world’s top three producers and importers of counterfeit goods over the 2010 to 2014 period. China produces nearly $1.6 billion in counterfeit products that flow largely to the United States, but also to the European Union and Japan. Hong Kong and other countries account for substantially lower levels of counterfeits than China.
Source: Bharadwaj, et al. (2020), using data from U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Global Intellectual Property Center, Measuring the Magnitude of Global Counterfeiting, and created in R using Plotly.

The figure to the right exhibits the world’s top three producers and importers of counterfeit goods over the 2010 to 2014 period. In that period, China produced nearly $1.6 billion in counterfeit products that flowed largely to the United States, but also to the European Union and Japan. Hong Kong and other countries accounted for substantially lower levels of counterfeits than China. Read more about this figure in the landscape of counterfeit trade report.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contact us

For questions, please contact: economics@uspto.gov

These resources were last updated on October 2021.

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