Given the clandestine nature of illegal counterfeiting and piracy (in short, pirates don’t submit annual reports to Wall Street) there is a significant gap between limited available data and the global awareness that counterfeiting and piracy are growing at an alarming rate.

Information contained in the BASCAP Digest is intended to narrow this gap and provide governments, industry actors and the public with a better understanding of the size of the problem and the threat it presents - from health and safety risks, to the losses incurred by governments and national economies. In particular, policy makers rely on good data and better information in order to make balanced decisions on how investments in IP enforcement can pay tangible dividends to economic development and society.

Information reported in the Digest is gathered through a rigorous search of public news and information sources from around the world, and then organized into key categories. The articles that appear in the Digest are a hand-picked selection of the most important news stories published that week. This tailor-made approach, therefore, delivers key highlights while avoiding duplicative reports and extraneous news stories. While thousands of sources are checked each day, the current research methodology is limited to information publicly available on the Internet and sourced in English and English translations.

Clearly, the scope of this problem and the natural limitations on available data means that the Digest cannot capture all stories every day. The Digest is however an important step forward in closing the information gap that has long hindered the ability to stop counterfeiting and piracy.

All original information is available in the BASCAP database, therefore if a link to a story has expired or for any other inquires please contact the BASCAP team.

We are also pleased to announce that the BASCAP digest is being developed in partnership with the ICC Counterfeiting Intelligence Bureau, drawing upon its 20 years of experience in working with industry to protect brand owners from the damage caused by counterfeiting. The digest will benefit from CIB's track record of gathering intelligence, making undercover enquiries, organizing the seizure of counterfeits, and providing expert advice and training.