Medicine seizures by EU customs rise again in 2009

Customs officers in the European Union detained fewer shipments suspected of infringing intellectual property rights in 2009 compared to 2008, but sadly that downturn did not extend to medicinal products.

Overall medicines accounted for around 10 per cent of all the 118 million articles intercepted by EU customs last year, and 8 per cent of the 43,500 individual cases.

In absolute terms, the number of seized medical products rose to around 11.5 million from a little under 9 million in 2008, which in turn was double the number in 2007.

Excluding instances where the shipment was found to be non-infringing or the brand owner failed to take the matter further, the tally of seized medicinal products was around 7.5 million. An equivalent figure for 2008 is not available.

UAE biggest source of medicinal products

The origins of the intercepted medicine shipments also makes interesting reading with 74 per cent of the articles coming from United Arab Emirates - a well-known hub for goods in transit from other markets into the EU - and 23 per cent coming from India.

China featured highly among other industrial sectors such as apparel and electronics, but was the source in just 1.4 per cent of medicinal product detentions. The only other country of origin worth mentioning was Syria, with around 1 per cent of the total.

Overall trends

The decrease in overall cases from a high of 49,000 in 2008 is attributed largely to fewer seizures involving DVDs and CDs, and to a lesser extent electronic devices. Of the top categories detained, cigarettes accounted for 19 per cent, followed by other tobacco products 16 per cent and labels at 13 per cent.

"All other sectors stayed stable or showed an increase," according to the report, which is available for download here.

More than 77 per cent of all detained products were destroyed or a court case was initiated to determine the infringement.


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