Entertainment One Licensing (eOne) has outlined the proactive stance it is taking to significantly reduce the sale of counterfeit merchandise and unlicensed events for Peppa Pig and PJ Masks around the world.
Andrew Carley, Head of Global Licensing, at Entertainment One, said: “Piracy is the single biggest issue facing brand owners in the licensing industry today. We are actively dealing with this situation to send a clear message that we will not tolerate the infringement of our IP and that we will make every effort to safeguard our brands and protect children from these poor quality and potentially harmful, untested counterfeit products.”
In the first 6 months of 2017, eOne seized over 250,000 counterfeit products globally via port seizures and market raids, and removed over 50,000 infringing listings on over 40 leading e-commerce platforms including Alibaba, Mercado Libre and Amazon. eOne also enforced against social media platforms, removing over 1,000 infringements across iTunes, GooglePlay and YouTube. Further, a number of infringing stage shows and unlicensed events have been cancelled via legal action across the Latin American region.
Considerable progress has been made to crack down on the sale of unlicensed merchandise across Latin America. This year alone, 200,000 counterfeit products were seized, 5,000 infringing e-commerce listings were removed, as well as successful action taken against several infringing stage shows across the region. These efforts build upon the previous crack down on piracy led by eOne in 2015, when 2.5million Peppa Pig counterfeit goods were seized globally; 2 million of which were seized in Brazil alone.
Significant actions have also taken place in Russia and China. In Russia, eOne removed over 10,000 counterfeit listings across 8 e-commence platforms including Avito and Aliexpress. Action has also been initiated against approximately 3,000 infringing URLs, 1,500 infringements on social media platforms, including Instagram and VK and over 100 civil lawsuits have been filed against sellers of counterfeit Peppa Pig products across Russia.
In China, following a successful raid of over 13,000 counterfeit Peppa Pig products in Shantou, Dongguan in January 2017, eOne has initiated civil lawsuits against over a dozen major sellers of counterfeit Peppa Pig products on Alibaba. In addition, the licensor has undertaken multiple port seizures across China and has aggressively targeted any trademark infringement, with over 20 legal actions currently in progress.
Toys and apparel are the most counterfeited products, which raises concerns over health and safety as the unlicensed products do not comply with the stringent legal guidelines required by official merchandise and may pose a health risk to the young children who purchase them. eOne has liaised with authorities and legal counsel across all key territories to proactively tackle this to limit the impact to its partners and the general public.
