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Piracy takes 57% of the legal trade in Greece today. And this is good news. Only four years ago in 2006, the trade with forgery was equal to 64 percent of the trade with original goods. The bad news is that Greece is still laying behind in the fight with piracy compared to the other members of the European Union where the average level of piracy turnover is 35% of the legal trade turnover. These numbers were announced by Joannis Kapeleris, special secretary of the Ministry of finance at the conference “Intellectual property – rights, protection, legal framework” organized by the Greek – American commercial chamber.

The intellectual property is a currency of world innovative entrepreneurship. The theft of intellectual property leads to the loss of working places for the citizens, loss of financial incomes for the companies, loss of paid taxes for the governments. The world’s economy is strongly build on the human knowledge, the stable business climate requires creation and innovations and the violation of the intellectual property leads to a dramatic decrease of the innovation. Around this opinion were united the participants in the conference.

“In the USA the protection of the copyright helps the sound recording companies, publishers and movie producing studios to create over 5,4 million work places”, announced Paul Malick, economic advisor of the American embassy in Athens. He announced that each year the piracy fight costs the USA 250 billion dollars, because of the violation of the intellectual property 750 000 work places are being closed annually. “In Greece only from the illegal sale of cigarettes are lost 35 million euro annually. It is worth it for the Greek police to double their efforts in order to deal with this problem. In a world scale 600 billion dollars are worth the violated rights of the intellectual property”, added Paul Malick.

According to Stephanos Comninos, commercial secretary in chief of the Ministry of economics, competitiveness and merchant marine, Greece is not anymore a country which produces counterfeit, this stage is over for it and that is why it is now ready to respect the intellectual property. The counterfeits are now produced in other parts of the world. Greece is now capable of producing original brand products. The fight with piracy however is still a problem, punishments are not effective, the application of the European legislation is being late.

“When a product becomes widely popular, there will always be people, who would want to purchase it at a low price. That is why on the streets of Athens most often you could see Louis Vuitton bags, made in China”, said Nikolaos Vernadakis, Director General of Customs and Excise in the Ministry of finance. He spoke about the necessity of the consumers to be informed of the damage of fake products. Michael Taylor, European Director of the world center for intellectual property, part of the American commercial chamber spoke about the effective attempt of USA, where big names of Hollywood and the show business are asked to help in the fight for the prevention of intellectual property.

“Piracy products are being supplied 7 times faster to the clients, that the legal original ones. They start from the movie piracy and end with the financial services. The movie piracy is the most profitable one, and is in the condition to finance all the others. DVDs and CDs moved the trade with movies and music albums from the big stores to the street. A political determination is required in order to solve the problem. In may cases the organized crime is also part of this and that is why tough punitive measures are necessary”, is the opinion of Michael Taylor.

Andonis Zobolas from the services for special control in the Ministry of finance announced that the most counterfeit in Greece are coming from China, the second largest importer of fake products is Turkey and at the third place is India.