Exclusive Swiss watches, designer clothing from France and leather products from Italy. Building up a brand name to the point where it becomes a fashion icon usually requires an enormous amount of preparatory work, innovation and risk taking. The owners of luxury brand names invest a lot of money to build up a particular image, including investment in quality assurance and innovation in order to maintain its reputation. All this contributes to the brand's popularity.

However, it should be borne in mind that those who purchase cheap imitation «Gucci» sunglasses on the beach in Sardinia are not just ruining things for luxury brand names. Such purchases also have a direct impact on the Danish society in the form of lost workplaces and tax revenue. Moreover, legitimate businesses are exposed to unfair competition from business operations that are involved in stealing the ideas and work of others and who therefore have no need to invest resources in product development. This, in turn, means that the original brand manufacturers suffer reduced profits and have less room to invest in innovation. Thus global growth in society is diminished.

According to a Europol risk analysis report from 2013, the money earned from counterfeit brand names is used to finance other illegal activities and organised crime such as people trafficking and drug smuggling.

You take a great risk, if you buy unauthorised medicines. Unauthorized medicine can cause very serious side effects and, in the worst case, lead to death.  Unauthorized medicine is manufactured, stored and sold outside the authorities control and it often contains other substans than those printed on the package. Or they may contain no active substances at all. Unauthorized medicines have even been found to contain substances like rat poison and paint.

Watch out when you buy medicines online!
Unauthorized medicines entering Denmark are typically bought from unauthorised online stores.

It's easy to be fooled into buying unauthorized medicines. The online stores which sell these medicines often look trustworthy and the medicine packaging is of high quality and similar to the packaging of the authorised medicine.

The Danish Medicines Agency therefore recommends that consumers watch out for themselves by only purchasing medicines on the Internet through online pharmacies or stores that have been authorized to sell medicines online by the Danish Medicines Agency or other medicines authorities in the EU . You can recognize such pharmacies on EU's green logo or blue logo.

When buying medicine for humans you should look for the green EU logo. If on the other hand, you need to buy medicine for animals, look for the blue EU logo.
The green and blue EU logo indicates that the online store is approved by a Medicines Agency, and the logo must appear on all online stores in the EU that are licensed to sell medicines to humans and animals, respectively.

On the Danish Medicines Agency's website, you can find overviews of Danish pharmacies and online stores (retailers) that are licensed to sell medicines to humans and animals via the Internet.
Here you can also get more good advice when buying medicines online.

Makeup, creams and other cosmetics are being counterfeited extensively. These products are usually sold on the internet by unauthorised sellers and, just as with medicines, these products can contain poisonous and harmful substances. There are examples og fake cosmetics which were found to contain arsenic, mercury, lead and rat excrements.

If you purchase fake cosmetics, you have no way of knowing who produced them, what they contain and who is responsible for making sure that they are safe to use. Nor are there any checks in place to ensure the products were manufactured in sterile conditions.

Wooden toys painted with paint containing lead; fun "jelly" trolls that contain paraffin; cuddly teddy bears with eyes that have not been secured properly and which therefore pose a risk of choking.

Toys and games also feature prominently in the world of counterfeit products. If you are offered brand name toys or games at a surprisingly low price, or via unusual sales channels, you have good reasons to be watchful. It could be fake. Counterfeit and pirated products have not been subject to the kind of product safety checks that apply for toys and games made by legitimate manufacturers.

The Danish Safety Technology Authority has a list of questions that you can ask yourself if you want to check, if the toys that you give to your child are safe. Read more here (in Danish).

Fake smartphones and chargers, earphones, kitchen appliances, music systems, hair dryers, hair straighteners, curling irons and TVs. Electronic devices are widely pirated and these fake versions constitute a serious risk to health and safety. Counterfeited and pirated products are not made with the purpose of giving you a safe and good product. They are made to earn the largest possible profit. 

You have no guarantee that a fake product will function properly; nor can you be sure that it is safe to use. Counterfeit and pirated electrical products can give a nasty electric shock, can suddenly short, or worst of all catch fire. Legal electrical products fulfil stringent safety requirements. Counterfeited and pirated products are outside the control from public authorities.

If you purchase counterfeit and pirated items, you are not only taking a big personal risk, you also contribute to a situation where those who should be earning money on an item they created do not receive anything.

In the spring of 2018, the Danish Safety Technology Authority has found several examples of counterfeit mobile chargers.

You can read their good advice when buying electronic products, on their website sik.dk (in Danish).

That well-known design classics are being copied is not news. But what is legal and illegal when it comes to buying or selling fake designer furniture.

In Denmark, it is illegal to sell fake designer furniture. However, this rule does not apply in all countries. If you buy fake designer furniture online from such a country, be aware that it is illegal to do so, if you plan to make it available to the public - for example by putting it up for sale.

If you buy a copy for yourself - and if you later find out that you do not want the copy anymore - be aware that it is illegal to sell, lend, rent or give away the copy before the copyright expires in Denmark. It will e.g. be illegal to resell a copy of the "Swan", before the copyright has expired.

Please also note that the customs authorities have the right to seize copy products at the border purchased on the internet from a country outside the EU. This also applies even if you purchased the product for private use.

Read more about copyright at the Ministry of Culture’s website

Up until now, few people would connect daily household products with counterfeiting. However, and unfortunately, household products are also being copied.

In 2017, Europol led an international operation that resulted in the seizure of 9800 tons, of fake food and 26.4 million liters of fake beverages. The products concerned were every day products such as alcohol, mineral water, seasoning cubes, seafood and olive oil.

The purpose of the operation was to identify the criminal networks behind that were responsible for the distribution and sale of counterfeit food and beverages.

Manufacturers that counterfeit household products and copy famous brands, use cheap raw materials and have no safety or quality control in their production. Those who are running the production of fake products are difficult to track down and there is, therefore, rarely an individual who can be held liable if you fall sick, say, after eating fake foodstuffs, or where a baby's nappy contains harmful substances, or where an item is not of the quality you expected.