{"id":44,"date":"2021-06-01T00:07:36","date_gmt":"2021-06-01T00:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christophermacolini.com\/blog\/?p=44"},"modified":"2022-02-03T13:43:22","modified_gmt":"2022-02-03T13:43:22","slug":"assigning-value-to-seized-products","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christophermacolini.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/01\/assigning-value-to-seized-products\/","title":{"rendered":"Assigning Value to Seized Products"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"boldgrid-section\">\n<div class=\"container\">\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col-md-12 col-xs-12 col-sm-12\">\n<div>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; When referring to seized goods, most companies use U.S. dollar or other monetary amounts to quantify their results. These values are somewhat&nbsp;aleatory in nature because it&nbsp;is difficult to place a true value on seized counterfeit products. In a&nbsp;strict sense,&nbsp;the real worth of seized counterfeit products to a client&nbsp;is exactly zero. The client will never sell the&nbsp;counterfeit products or&nbsp;otherwise generate any income from these products. In most cases, it&nbsp;will further&nbsp;cost the client to investigate, press charges and oversee the&nbsp;destruction of the seized products. Therefore the&nbsp;true monetary value&nbsp;of the seized goods is nothing.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; How, then, do companies arrive at the numbers used to describe a&nbsp;seizure? The answer varies from client to&nbsp;client. Some use the average&nbsp;price of a genuine product, which they consider the amount of a sale&nbsp;lost to a&nbsp;counterfeit. Depending on the product, however, this might&nbsp;not reflect the truth. Take, for example, a luxury&nbsp;handbag that sells&nbsp;for US$3,000. Knockoffs of that handbag can be purchased in many&nbsp;parts of the world for&nbsp;less than&nbsp;$100. It is a bit of a stretch, however,&nbsp;to assume that everyone who purchases a counterfeit&nbsp;handbag would&nbsp;have purchased the genuine article if given the chance. That is why&nbsp;some companies assign&nbsp;a percentage of the cost of a genuine product,&nbsp;say&nbsp;30&nbsp;percent, when calculating losses attributable to&nbsp;customers&nbsp;buying knockoffs.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Still other companies assign values based on sales increases seen&nbsp;in the wake of seizures of counterfeits. For&nbsp;example, one of our&nbsp;investigations resulted in the seizure of&nbsp;15,000&nbsp;electrical parts. The next&nbsp;month, our&nbsp;client saw sales of that product spike by over US$150,000.&nbsp;Consequently, they assigned a value of&nbsp;$150,000&nbsp;to the seizure.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; One other point to keep in mind: Intellectual-property investigations&nbsp;are often plagued by the same question&nbsp;that is debated by narcotics&nbsp;departments around the world: Is it better to seize 1 million counterfeit&nbsp;products&nbsp;and arrest nobody, or arrest the number-one counterfeiter&nbsp;in the world but make no seizures?<\/p><\/div>\n<div>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Obviously, the&nbsp;correct answer is&nbsp;to seize 1 million counterfeit products and arrest the number-one&nbsp;counterfeiter in the&nbsp;world.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; When referring to seized goods, most companies use U.S. dollar or other monetary amounts to quantify their results. These values are somewhat&nbsp;aleatory in nature because it&nbsp;is difficult to place a true value on seized counterfeit products. In a&nbsp;strict sense,&nbsp;the real worth of seized counterfeit products to a client&nbsp;is exactly zero.&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/christophermacolini.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/01\/assigning-value-to-seized-products\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Assigning Value to Seized Products<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christophermacolini.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christophermacolini.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christophermacolini.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christophermacolini.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christophermacolini.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/christophermacolini.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46,"href":"https:\/\/christophermacolini.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/46"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christophermacolini.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christophermacolini.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christophermacolini.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}