Fake luxury goods market thriving in India

As etailing market flourishes and online shopping reaches Tier II, III cities, of late, it’s been suffering due to import of fake and grey market products of high-end luxury labels like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Jimmy Choo, and so on. Recently, Kering, including Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, sued Alibaba for letting counterfeit goods find their way on its platforms.

For example, Darveys, has caught the attention of brands such as Jimmy Choo, Judith Leiber and Christian Louboutin, which have initiated legal action against the startup to stop it from selling their products online in India. Luxury French shoe and bag designer Christian Louboutin has filed a case against the platform for “infringement of trademarks, publicity rights, passing off, unfair competition, dilution, damages, rendition of accounts and delivery up against the defendants”.

The counterfeit luxury retail market in India is likely to double to Rs 5,600 crores by 2015 and steps such as effective intellectual property enforcement are the need of the hour to curb this menace, an Assocham study says. “Corrective measures need to be taken to lock down the emergence and existence of counterfeit goods market in the form of effective intellectual property enforcement, plugging loop holes in the legal and judicial structure and higher conviction rates,” Assocham Secretary General D S Rawat said.

While fighting fakes can be expensive and time-consuming, SIPI recently started the Asian Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy, which enables several brands to get together and fight against the fake goods market. It is also launching an IP health index to help brands understand the problems they are facing in the digital world. US brand Diesel has recently been battling issues of infringements of its trademarks and designs in China. In 2014, Diesel started a legal action before a US Federal Court against 83 sites that were illegally selling counterfeited products via sites with ‘Diesel’ in their domain names. So far, Diesel has closed 3,346 sites, sent 4,000 cease and desist letters, and delisted 19,000 sites from Google.