Research on Online Business Models Infringing Intellectual Property Rights

The European Observatory on Infringements of Intellectual Property Rights at the EUIPO published the results of the first phase of research study on business models that infringe intellectual property rights on the internet, originally titled “Research on Online Business Models Infringing Intellectual Property Rights”.

The research is divided to be implemented in two phases, with phase one (which is the subject matter of this study) being a qualitative study providing an overview of the different business models used to infringe intellectual property rights online, and a phase two being a quantitative oriented phase comprising research of specific such infringing business strategies in more detail.

During the research conducted for the purpose of this study, 25 distinct business models infringing intellectual property rights were identified and analysed, and the study shows that infringement of trademarks and copyrights are the most common with using the mentioned business models, with frequent cases of several intellectual property rights being infringed at the same time.

The study gives the basic difference between the business models infringing and the ones non-infringing intellectual property rights lying in the fact that the first ones are often deceptive to the customers and have been developed precisely to gain profit from activities infringing intellectual property rights, whereas there is no difference between these business models regarding the way of gaining revenue from consumers (such as revenue from the sale of goods, subscription fees, advertising and the like). Examples of deceptive business models are found on websites marketing counterfeit goods to consumers in ways that give the consumer the impression of an original product or models connected with cybersquatting. Dissemination of malware is also noticed on such websites. On the other hand, there are also online business models infringing intellectual property rights, which are not deceptive to consumers, as it is the case with Darknet, where consumers are aware of buying the goods that infringe intellectual property rights.

In cases where there is a possibility to identify offenders that base their businesses on such illegal business models and to initiate certain enforcement actions against these offenders, either through a civil lawsuit, criminal charges, an alternative dispute resolution procedure or via a “notice and takedown” request, the study has also found that providers of these services often continue their infringing activities via a new user profile, a new domain name and the like.

The study is available at the following link.

 

Datum novosti: 15/07/2016