What is the MOST counterfeited product in the WORLD? – Ep. 30 [Podcast]

Summary

In this week’s episode of Stuff You Should Know About IP, Thomas Colson and Raymond Guarnieri welcome special guest Jayne Durden for a conversation about counterfeited goods. Trademark infringement involves marks used in an identical or confusingly similar way, whereas counterfeiting involves goods that contain identical brands. Sales of counterfeit goods have been linked to money laundering, drugs, and organized crime. Airplane and vehicle replacement parts are more counterfeited than any other group of goods. Sometimes a counterfeit good is only distinguished from a genuine article by subtleties in the packaging, such as where glue spots are placed. Sometimes a counterfeit is of a lower quality than the original. Counterfeiting harms: 1) buyers, because they don’t get the real brand they think they’re getting; 2) brand owners, because consumers believe the low-quality counterfeits were made by the genuine brand; and 3) the public, because unsafe products are unleashed on society. Consumers might buy counterfeit goods, including children’s toys, through online retailers. Customs and Border Patrol handles cases of counterfeit goods like Pokemon cards, golf balls, and Super Bowl merchandise. There are so many brands registered with customs that it can be challenging for law enforcement to keep up. Drugs comprise the second-most counterfeited group of goods, and the World Health Organization has warned that counterfeit COVID-19 vaccines are thought to be entering the global supply chain.

Transcript

Raymond Guarnieri:

Have you ever wondered, what are the most counterfeited products in the world? Designer handbags, perfume, iPhones? We’re here today with special guest, Jayne Durden, to discuss the answer to this question. And the answer might surprise you, maybe even scare you. This is Stuff You Should Know About IP. Today’s episode of Stuff You Should Know About IP is brought to you by the Trademark Lawyer Magazine. If you want to stay up to date with everything that’s going on in the world of IP and trademarks, go to www.trademarklawyermagazine.com. Each issue is free to read for up to eight weeks. That’s trademarklawyermagazine.com for global news in the world of trademarks. All right, Tom, Jayne, let’s talk about counterfeited goods.

Thomas Colson:

All right. So Jayne, just to warn you now, we have millions of people watching, okay? Millions-

Jayne Durden:

No pressure-

Thomas Colson:

Not dozens, millions. And today, you are our greatest counterfeit expert. You know more than Tom and Ray combined. So help us with Ray’s really interesting question about what are the most counterfeited goods? What are counterfeited goods? Let’s start there.

Jayne Durden:

Excellent. So counterfeited goods are goods that don’t come from the place that you think they’d come from. So Ray was right. You’re most likely to think of this as the knockoff Louis Vuitton purses, or a pair of Nike sold on the side of the street. They are shoes or handbags that don’t come, surprise, surprise, from Louis Vuitton or from Nike. And they are everywhere. I bet that you’ve got something counterfoot sitting in the room that you’re sitting in right now.

Thomas Colson:

Well, but here’s the thing though, Jayne, because you said that they’re not from the place you think they’re from.

Jayne Durden:

Yep-

Thomas Colson:

But trademark infringement is all about tricking people into buying stuff that they think, is from a different source. So how does trademark infringement differ from counterfeits?

Jayne Durden:

Excellent question. So when you’ve got trademark infringement, you’ve got a similar, identical, or confusingly similar mark that’s been used. So instead of Nike, you’ve got Niko, or something that looks or sounds similar, right?

Thomas Colson:

Oh my God-

Jayne Durden:

And you know that it’s not [crosstalk 00:02:22].

Thomas Colson:

Oh my God, I have Niko sneakers.

Jayne Durden:

You do?-

Thomas Colson:

So they’re fake?-

Jayne Durden:

Yeah

Thomas Colson:

I have Niko sneakers. I thought they were real. I thought [crosstalk 00:02:27] it was a new Nike brand.

Jayne Durden:

They’re original Niko’s but they’re probably a little cheaper.

Thomas Colson:

Yeah. It’s funny, they were only $12 and I thought it was weird-

Jayne Durden:

It’s amazing.

Thomas Colson:

Yeah.

Jayne Durden:

I got some friends who can help you out there. So often, counterfeit goods actually have the identical brand on them. If you walk down the street in the market and you pick up a pair of Nike’s, they’re going to have this swoosh on them. They probably got Nike on them. But something’s not going to be quite right. But then here’s the issue, put a pair of not Nike’s on and walk down street. And probably, the worst that can happen to you is you get a sore foot, they fall apart, you get a bit embarrassed when someone goes, “They’re not real.”

Thomas Colson:

Right.

Jayne Durden:

That’s not a problem. But actually, the problem with counterfeits is massive when you look at what’s happening in the background. Now, the FBI and a number of other areas of our government are really, really interested in counterfeits. So counterfeit goods account for a huge amount of laundered cash. So there’s a huge link between sales of counterfeit, fake Nike’s, and organized crime. So that’s [crosstalk 00:03:37].

Thomas Colson:

Oh, you said laundered cash? Money laundering.-

Jayne Durden:

Laundering.

Thomas Colson:

Right?

Jayne Durden:

Yes. [crosstalk 00:03:41].

Raymond Guarnieri:

Yes.

Thomas Colson:

So people are trying-

Jayne Durden:

Money laundering-

Thomas Colson:

to take dirty money that they got from selling-

Jayne Durden:

That’s right-

Thomas Colson:

drugs, or something and put it into the system somehow. So that they could use it to get mortgages and into their bank accounts and everything. So-

Jayne Durden:

Yeah-

Thomas Colson:

you’re saying these counterfeit products are actually used also as a vehicle for money laundering?

Jayne Durden:

That’s right. And you certainly see, there’s a huge link that the FBI and other branches of the government are really interested in because of the link yes, to drugs and other areas of organized crime. So, that’s an area of direct time. So already we’ve got, you haven’t got what you paid for. There’s this link to organized crime, but there’s something-

Thomas Colson:

Sore feet?

Jayne Durden:

Sore feet-

Thomas Colson:

You got sore-

Jayne Durden:

Yes-

Thomas Colson:

feet, right?

Jayne Durden:

[inaudible 00:04:24] sore feet. We got them-

Thomas Colson:

So, you didn’t get what you paid for, we’re laundering money, my feet are killing because of these Nike’s. Which by the way, makes me think Nike’s aren’t good, right? Because-

Jayne Durden:

Precisely-

Thomas Colson:

I thought I had legitimate Nike’s and my feet are sore. And I’m, “Why does everyone pay so much for these?”

Jayne Durden:

[inaudible 00:04:40] for Nike, right?

Thomas Colson:

Yeah. The brand is being diminished.

Jayne Durden:

Exactly. And so you can see why in this case look, everyone wants to go and take action, but look, what’s the harm, right? But you now want to know the answer to the number one counterfeited good? Did we build it up enough?

Thomas Colson:

No, no, no, no. Oh yes-

Jayne Durden:

We didn’t?

Thomas Colson:

No, No. We absolutely did. We want to know the number one counterfeited good. Go ahead.

Jayne Durden:

So it’s, it’s not sexy. It’s actually just plain scary. The number one counterfeit group of goods in the world are, airplane and vehicle replacement parts. So what does that mean? That means you take your car down to go and go and get repaired and they put in what should be a Bosch [inaudible 00:05:25] underneath your hood, until I work on cars, and it’s not real.

Raymond Guarnieri:

I thought that was a real replacement part.

Jayne Durden:

A [inaudible 00:05:32] yeah. Look, I do know about brake drums and things like that though. And that’s what you’re seeing in the marketplace. So again, in a vehicle you’ve got massive potential for harm, but did I also say airplane replacement parts? Oh, yeah-

Raymond Guarnieri:

Yeah, that’s terrifying.

Jayne Durden:

So that’s absolutely petrifying, right? So we’ve-

Thomas Colson:

Yeah-

Jayne Durden:

got these counterfeit parts going around in the marketplace, above our heads in very large, very dangerous vehicles. [crosstalk 00:05:58]

Thomas Colson:

So I’m careening down the hill, I press on my brakes and I don’t realize there’s counterfeit brake drums.

Jayne Durden:

That’s right.

Thomas Colson:

So when I press on my brakes, they don’t work.

Jayne Durden:

Yep-

Thomas Colson:

That’s scary. But worse, more scary is when I’m in a plane. Because in 2019, I think I was gone 89 nights. Most of those trips were on planes. So you’re saying that the thing that keeps the plane up might be counterfeit?

Jayne Durden:

Yeah. I’m not casting any aspersions on any of our vehicle, any of our airlines over here. But who knows? Right? So the problem with counterfeits is good counterfeits are almost imperceivable, from the original goods. There’s actual science to detecting counterfeit goods. It comes down to sometimes the products are nearly identical and it’s only the packaging and the way the glue spots are put on, that alerts people to the fact that these are not real. That’s how clever counterfeiters have got. But at the end of the day, if they’re not the real product A, there’s harm that it might break. But B, Tom if something did happen, you’re really stuck. Because okay, we won’t put you on a plane, we’ll put you on a tiny moped. Just so that the-

Thomas Colson:

Okay-

Jayne Durden:

accident doesn’t hurt you.

Thomas Colson:

Yeah.

Jayne Durden:

You’re mopeding down the-

Thomas Colson:

Right.

Jayne Durden:

street-

Thomas Colson:

Not by the way that I’ve ever driven a moped.

Jayne Durden:

I think-

Thomas Colson:

but go ahead. Let’s just imagine in some parallel universe where I was a lot less manly, I was on a moped. Okay?

Raymond Guarnieri:

Oh, men [crosstalk 00:07:29]

Thomas Colson:

I don’t want you to get a hurt in this scenario. So I’m giving-

Thomas Colson:

Okay-

Jayne Durden:

you a very low velocity vehicle-

Thomas Colson:

Okay, okay-

Jayne Durden:

Heading along, you put your hands on the brakes and nothing happens. Now you crashed into, I don’t know, what are you going to crash into? [crosstalk 00:07:45].

Thomas Colson:

A tree.

Jayne Durden:

No, No. You’re going to crash into one of those big, wobbly people outside a cart. I want it soft.

Raymond Guarnieri:

Yeah, yeah, yeah-

Thomas Colson:

Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay got you.

Jayne Durden:

You cause some damage. So here’s the problem though, when you’ve got counterfeit goods in your car you’ve got no form of recourse back to any original manufacturer. And so therefore, if you did get sued, you’d have problems all the way back because you don’t have original parts in your car. And so the liability here in the United States with the way that things work with insurance, look, you’ll be fine. You’ve got insurance and you only ran into a little soft, wobbly man.

Thomas Colson:

Right.

Jayne Durden:

But you see the problem both for consumers and for the general public. And we go on and we go on. So [crosstalk 00:08:31]

Thomas Colson:

Wait. But so one thing that jumped out at me Jayne, you said that the products, these counterfeit products, are identical sometimes except for the little glue spots and a little bit of the packaging.

Jayne Durden:

Maybe-

Thomas Colson:

You don’t mean that the guts of it are identical? Because that’s the problem is that, they’re lesser parts and they’re more cheaply made? Right?

Jayne Durden:

Yeah. That’s right. So counterfeiters are great. They’ll make things out of different materials. So if your car parts were supposed to be made out of steel, they make it [inaudible 00:09:01] something else. And then make them [crosstalk 00:09:03]

Thomas Colson:

Like bamboo?

Jayne Durden:

Exactly. Or a lower grade and paint them silver.

Thomas Colson:

Right.

Jayne Durden:

You don’t know if the electronic elements are correctly made, you have no guarantee of quality. And remember basics of trademarks is that, your trademark is the designation of the quality and origin of goods and services. So-

Thomas Colson:

Right, yes.

Jayne Durden:

origin of it, you knew that it came from Bosch or that it came from somewhere. And quality was, you knew it came from them. And so therefore you’ve got some recourse that you understand, how it was made and how it should behave

Thomas Colson:

And an expectation of quality, right?

Jayne Durden:

Absolutely-

Thomas Colson:

You have an expectation of quality, which is now-

Jayne Durden:

Yep-

Thomas Colson:

gone. So number one, we have the buyer is harmed because they bought something that wasn’t real, that they thought was real. The real brand owner is harmed because now somebody thinks that the Nike sneakers aren’t good.

Jayne Durden:

Yep.

Thomas Colson:

But also the public is harmed because now you have moped drivers, careening all around driving into those wiggly men, right?

Jayne Durden:

Exactly. Exactly-

Thomas Colson:

So [crosstalk 00:10:04] car dealers absolutely hate counterfeits because they spent a lot of money on those wobbly man. Right?

Jayne Durden:

Exactly-

Thomas Colson:

They don’t want moped riders like Ray, driving into them?

Jayne Durden:

No. But the add [crosstalk 00:10:17].

Raymond Guarnieri:

Don’t make fun of me in my moped.

Jayne Durden:

You’re rocking yours too. But to add onto that one more problem, right? So 10, 15 years ago your moped breaks down. You hit your ride and you go off down to your car manufacturer, parts place and you buy one off the shelf. That’s not how we buy about 90% of the things we buy. And what do you do? You go on Amazon, you go online. You go and look-

Thomas Colson:

Right.

Jayne Durden:

for a deal, right? And so now we’ve got a problem of you’re not even able, as a consumer, to look at it and go, “[inaudible 00:10:48] look quite right.”

Thomas Colson:

Right. [crosstalk 00:10:50].

Jayne Durden:

By the time you though it, Mm-mm (negative) it doesn’t look quite right. So, what are you going to do? A few years ago, I was late for a meeting, flew into San Francisco realized that I’d left my toiletries bag on the seat in the airplane. What did I do? Couldn’t find anywhere else to go and do it. I, Amazon primed myself a whole lot of things that I needed before my meeting. [inaudible 00:11:13] at my door really quickly. Quick is great.

Jayne Durden:

But it picked up my Estée Lauder products and looked at them and was, “It’s not like the package of the one that I have at home. That’s funny.” And then I smelled the product and was, “It’s not what it normally smells like.” I’d flown-

Thomas Colson:

Wow-

Jayne Durden:

into San Francisco and bought myself some counterfeit, Estée Lauder products from Amazon-

Thomas Colson:

Wow, from Amazon-

Jayne Durden:

And this happens all the time. Exactly. And so-

Thomas Colson:

Wow.

Jayne Durden:

As our mechanisms of buying things as consumers are changing, we’re losing a lot of those other protections that we would have actually had, right? Someone who sold it to me, who looked at it and went, “Doesn’t look quite right.” Or me knowing that I’ve got to buy it from a proper store to make sure, I’m more likely to get proper goods. And so we’re losing that. And so you can imagine that there’s actually even more harm at the moment. So tell me the number one time we buy things online, in America?

Thomas Colson:

Pokemon cards.

Jayne Durden:

No. But you’re jumping ahead, jumping ahead, you’re jumping ahead. Now we’ve got black Friday and whatever they call [crosstalk 00:12:19] online Monday, right? Cyber Monday. And here’s the deal? What are people most likely buying? They’re buying toys for their kids for Christmas-

Thomas Colson:

Oh, yes.

Jayne Durden:

And so now you’ve got kids toys sold online-

Raymond Guarnieri:

Right.

Jayne Durden:

and [inaudible 00:12:30]. My favorite part, I didn’t even tell you this beforehand. I went and had a look to look at what the federal government’s doing. They’re having a fine old time. A, they’re really taking this problem seriously and they’re enacting legislation. And three pieces of legislation were passed between 2019 and 2020. And what I love about this is that Congress has got together and had a blast with naming the legislation. I kid you not. The legislation in order was the Center Act of 2019. Which is the Stop All Nefarious Toys in America Act.

Thomas Colson:

Wow.

Jayne Durden:

Brilliant. But wait-

Thomas Colson:

Brilliant-

Jayne Durden:

But wait.

Thomas Colson:

Love it-

Jayne Durden:

By early 2020 we now have the more innocuous, Shop Safe. Which means, Shopping Harmful Offers on Platforms by Screening Against Fakes in Ecommerce Act. But not finished, not finished. They had a third go. Which is called the INFORM Consumers Act of 2020. And this was the final bid of protecting people online. Which is the, Integrity Notification and Fairness in Online Retail Marketplace Act. Come on.

Thomas Colson:

Nice.

Jayne Durden:

That’s creative.

Thomas Colson:

Great names. [crosstalk 00:13:43] I love it. Yeah. No, [crosstalk 00:13:45] those are some good names. All right. So I already spoiled one of your surprises. So let’s talk about Pokemon.

Jayne Durden:

So Pokemon cards. I got involved with Pokemon cards and counterfeits when I first came to the States. And I worked with someone from the former Immigration Enforcement Act. And senior special agents there, are responsible for enforcing counterfeits and trademark infringement when imports are made. It’s now Customs and Border Protection. And the agent that I was working with was working on two cases. And I was, “Oh, this is great. We’re protecting the world.” Number one, Pokemon cards. And again, I was, “Okay, what’s the harm?” Well, doing a little bit of prep beforehand I looked up and in October, 2020… Do you know who Logan Paul is from YouTube?

Raymond Guarnieri:

Yeah, he’s a-

Jayne Durden:

He’s one of the-

Raymond Guarnieri:

Yeah-

Jayne Durden:

top of YouTubers-

Raymond Guarnieri:

Yeah, yeah in YouTube.

Jayne Durden:

Yeah.

Raymond Guarnieri:

Yeah.

Jayne Durden:

He was duped out of $375,000 worth of Pokemon cards. He turned out that he’d bought Pokemon cards-

Raymond Guarnieri:

What?-

Jayne Durden:

that were fake. Nope. Nice problem-

Thomas Colson:

Wow-

Jayne Durden:

to have, right?

Raymond Guarnieri:

Yeah-

Thomas Colson:

Yeah. So in other words, his entire batch was Mew and Mewtwo? I only know that those are the two most powerful Pokemon because my kids used to play them all the time. And when I saw Mew the first time I thought, Oh, that’s a cute little, one inch tall creature that can’t be dangerous. And they said, “No, dad, no dad. Mew is the most powerful Pokemon.” Until they genetically modified Mewtwo of course,

Jayne Durden:

There you go. You lost me at Pokemon. But Tom, [inaudible 00:15:24] problems.

Raymond Guarnieri:

I think I still have some of mine lying around somewhere.

Thomas Colson:

Well, hopefully they’re legit and you didn’t suffer from what that YouTuber had. $325,000 of bogus Pokemon.

Jayne Durden:

Exactly. [crosstalk 00:15:35]

Raymond Guarnieri:

Yeah. If I had known they are worth any thousands of dollars, I might’ve done a better job preserving them instead of stuffing them into a drawer.

Jayne Durden:

I think-

Thomas Colson:

Right.

Jayne Durden:

Pokemon cards are the new Beanie Babies. So little Beanie Babies are coming back, I think, or something. But look, the second case that he was working on was about golf gloves and golf balls. And again, you’re, “Ah, what’s the difference?” Well-

Thomas Colson:

Hey, you were saving the world, Jayne.

Jayne Durden:

I know. Saving the world one Pokemon and golf ball at a time. But Tom look in August of 2020, just last year, China actually seized $120,000 of golf products alone in one single go. So you can see the massive proliferation of this this is just one seizure. And it’s pretty incredible. Just the-

Thomas Colson:

Yeah, that is pretty incredible.

Jayne Durden:

Yeah.

Thomas Colson:

And wait. So, golf balls… I used to golf a little tiny bit and so the problem with counterfeit golf balls is you’re out there, and you’re getting ready to smack the ball. You’re normally, I don’t know, Ray, you’re probably a big hitter, like 300 yards or something.

Raymond Guarnieri:

No way. But-

Thomas Colson:

But it only goes one 180 and you’re, “Wait, what happened with my 300 yard hit?”

Raymond Guarnieri:

Now I have an excuse. [crosstalk 00:16:50]

Jayne Durden:

Don’t blame me. Exactly.

Thomas Colson:

Yeah, counterfeit golf balls. Yes. Yeah. And you can even say, “Oh those damn counterfeits, they’re killing me.”

Jayne Durden:

Yep.

Thomas Colson:

Yeah. So, right now though, is US Customs seizing all kinds of counterfeit products every day from our borders?-

Jayne Durden:

Yeah. So Customs and Border Patrol, one of their remits is to enforce intellectual property. And you can see at certain times, especially when this really peaks. So we’re talking about at Superbowl huge time for counterfeit goods, with counterfeit licensed hats and things like that coming in. But any brand owner through their attorney as well can go off and can seek to register their brand, with CBP and have CBP enforce that. So what this means is that when the container ships come in, CBP can and will go and enforce your brand by doing checks of goods that are coming in, to check against your brand to make sure that they look good. So the golf glove thing was handled that way. That was actually one of the first. So this is definitely 15 years ago. This was a group of the agents down on the docks with a copy of the mark and the brand and what it was supposed to look like, going on to ships and then seizing that entire container until it could be checked.

Jayne Durden:

Now, why is this important? What is important is, it’s stopping them getting into our economy and it’s making sure that those goods don’t get there. Which is actually really important. Stamping out people selling them on the side of the streets like whack-a-mole, you’re just going to find-

Thomas Colson:

Right.

Jayne Durden:

another group picking them up. But what it also does is it gives the brand owner the evidence that they need, to actually be able to start to take action. So they’ve got the specimen, they’ve actually got a documented seizure of the goods and it’s really good. And every time CBP does this kind of seizure, it does have an impact also by showing people that we’re serious, we will enforce intellectual property rights. And we will disrupt the import of [crosstalk 00:18:58]

Thomas Colson:

I’m guessing that they have some AI or something, because there’s got to be thousands of brands that are registered with customs, right? I just can’t imagine a guy with a clipboard looking through, “Oh, wait, there was Pokemon on here. I thought I saw Pokemon when I was playing around with this earlier.” There’s got to be some brains to this, right?

Jayne Durden:

Do you know, that’s a really good idea. We’re working on something in my day job where we’re looking at counterfeit enforcement, and we’ve got an app that we’ve been doing. But I will say that I think one of the problems at the moment is, there are so many brands. And you look at the-

Thomas Colson:

Yeah-

Jayne Durden:

number of trademarks filed every year-

Thomas Colson:

Oh my God. Yeah [Crosstalk 00:19:36].

Jayne Durden:

Like I said, it’s just keeping up with that. And for law enforcement to be able to keep up with it, it’s really, really difficult.

Thomas Colson:

It must be hairy, right? There are probably… Because I’m an intellectual property lawyer and I’ve registered products with Customs. And I assure my clients, “Don’t worry, I’m registering with Customs.” But I’m thinking to myself, there are thousands of brands. And back in the olden days, by the way, when I was doing this a lot in the 90s before the emergence of the internet and all cool electronic stuff, they were probably just looking by hand, right?

Jayne Durden:

Absolutely. I was telling you on our first jobs in Australia, we would go on for the Olympic bid. And I had to go down to the market in Melbourne, “Go buy hats.” Was what they told me. “We want everything with an Olympic logo.” And then of course they’re there. Well the trick was, to go and take someone, who in Melbourne at that time, spoke Vietnamese. Because what we were trying to do was to buy it in the market, get somebody to speak to the seller who could tell us where they bought it from. Can you imagine?

Thomas Colson:

Yeah. Right-

Jayne Durden:

We are literally [crosstalk 00:20:39] back along the supply chain? So you’re exactly right. People are getting smarter. And I told you that we use forensic investigation, types of mechanisms. There’s a whole area of investigative services and investigators who do online searches and online yeah, forensic investigations using incredible mechanisms to actually get back into that supply chain, and catch people before those things make it. So when I say CBP is going down to go and pick up the shipping crates and containers, sometimes there is intelligence that you can get that show that it’s more likely that it’ll be on that one, than that one. And, “Hey, we think something’s coming in and can you please do it?”

Thomas Colson:

Yeah. And they have to know what they’re looking for.

Jayne Durden:

That’s right-

Thomas Colson:

And that’s why they sent you down there with the baseball bat to slam the table and demand that they tell you, when the next shipment was coming in, right?

Jayne Durden:

It was a golf club for the golf ball.

Thomas Colson:

Oh God, yes [crosstalk 00:21:40].

Jayne Durden:

Right. Sorry-

Thomas Colson:

That’s right. Yeah. You use the driver though, right? Yeah. I can imagine [crosstalk 00:21:47] that Jayne. That was in your early days as a lawyer-

Jayne Durden:

It was.

Thomas Colson:

You thought when went to law school, I probably won’t be hitting anyone with a golf club at a flea market ever in my job. And your first day you’re down there beating people up with a golf club-

Jayne Durden:

I did come out thinking I should have done more golf in law school and [inaudible 00:22:07] and other things like that. But.

Thomas Colson:

Right. But so Jayne, tell me, is there something even more dangerous that’s highly counterfeited-

Jayne Durden:

Yeah-

Thomas Colson:

than aircraft parts and Pokemon?

Jayne Durden:

Yeah, look. So second most counterfeited goods are pharmaceuticals. And we know this is a problem as people more increasingly are buying pharmaceuticals online. We know that as pharmaceutical costs rise in the US people are buying them from Canada and understandably. But the problem with that is massive, massive area of counterfeit. So I glibly raised the question the other day of, “Now what are we going to do?” We’re at a time right now where I’ve got, thank goodness for pharmaceutical developers and thank you innovators. Because-

Thomas Colson:

Right.

Jayne Durden:

we’re waiting for and so incredibly reliant on these COVID vaccines. And I flippantly said to you the other day, “What would happen if we had counterfeit COVID vaccines?” Well, quick search of the internet this morning showed that the World Health Organization has put out a warning that they think that counterfeit COVID vaccines, are getting into the supply chain. Now we’re unlikely to get this in the United States because of the regulation and the [inaudible 00:23:28] of sophistication. But think of that developing nations. Think-

Thomas Colson:

Oh my God-

Jayne Durden:

about nations that need this and thinks that they’re receiving it from one place and don’t receive this. And look, the impact of that is actually on all of this as we’re finding out. So.

Thomas Colson:

Wow. Yeah, [crosstalk 00:23:44]. No, that brings it [crosstalk 00:23:46] home.

Jayne Durden:

But that’s what we’re talking about.

Thomas Colson:

I would say that probably brings it home better than any of the examples you’ve given are, counterfeit COVID vaccines. Yeah. Could you imagine that? You get your shot, you feel secure but all you got was just some sugar water.

Jayne Durden:

Yeah, who knows

Thomas Colson:

Yeah, that’s pretty scary. And Ray, on that terrifying note

Raymond Guarnieri:

Yeah-

Thomas Colson:

I think this has been a great podcast.

Raymond Guarnieri:

Yeah. Jayne, I really appreciate. And on both of our behalves, appreciate you coming here today and sharing this information about counterfeited goods. And I’m a little unsettled. I’m not going to lie. But it’s important that people know this. And so thank you so much. And for everyone who’s watching if you enjoyed this podcast, please don’t forget to like, comment and subscribe. And importantly, share the podcast with your friends. And we’ll see you next time. All right. Thanks.

Thomas Colson:

Thanks