ANALYSIS
AmCham Macedonia Campaign
“Stay Healthy: Buy Originals!”
With the financial support from the U.S. Embassy
in Skopje, AmCham Macedonia recently partnered
with the National Coordinative Body for Intellectual Property Rights Protection (NCBIPR) to create
a traveling, interactive exhibition featuring counterfeit cosmetics, drugs, personal hygiene items and
other similar goods found on the local marketplace.
The items were selected for their potential impact
on consumer health and informational leaflets were
distributed to visitors on the potential health effects
of such goods, how to identify them and what to do
if a good is suspected to be counterfeit. In order to
reach a large number of consumers, the exhibition
visited 5 of the country’s largest cities, one each
week throughout October 2013. The outdoor stands
were staffed by inspectors from the State Market Inspectorate, one of the key institutions in the country’s fight against the counterfeit trade.
While Macedonian laws are largely in line with EU
Directives in the IPR sphere, there is a great deal of
public apathy with respect to illegal practices such
Emerging Macedonia Fall 2013 Issue 39
as counterfeiting. The common attitude is that such
practices are necessary in poor countries – in other
words, counterfeiters provide an important public
service by making cheap alternatives to global brand
names available. AmCham Macedonia’s IPR committee (made up of company representatives from
the whole range of IPR-impacted spheres) thought it
was important to help dispel this myth by highlighting the negative impacts that counterfeit goods can
have on consumer health.
The key messages we wanted consumers to take
away were:
1. Almost anything can be counterfeited – including
medicines, food and beverages and condoms;
2. Counterfeits are not always harmless – in addition to being made from cheaper, less effective
materials, they can lead to allergies as well as
other side effects and unexpected interactions;
and
3. Potentially dangerous counterfeits are a local
problem – consumers here should be proactive
and report suspected counterfeits to authorities.
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