Solutions to a counterfeit culture

(Conclusion)

Last year, counterfeit con—sumables translated into about $22.6 million in lost revenue for Canon in China alone. On a global scale, the losses amounted to "several hundreds of millions of US dollars," Tanaka told reporters at a media conference here.

Aside from consumables, Canon is fighting the counterfeit culture on many fronts. This is because there have been counterfeit copies of most of its consumer products such as still cameras, calculators, video cameras, copiers and even fax machines, that are being made and sold in the market.

Canon is an innovator in its key industries. The company has submitted 18,876 patents for products or technologies developed in the past 100 years. In 2003 alone, Canon received 1,992 US patents, putting it in second place only to IBM in terms of patent volume.

All these new technologies created by companies such as Canon don’t come cheap. Thousands of man-hours, product design, testing and prototyping and quality assurance tests as well as marketing costs add up to a sizable amount that a company needs to spend to create and promote its products, many of which don’t even make it to the production line.

Canon, like many of its competitors, has undertaken a massive information campaign to teach consumers and resellers how to spot fake products. Tanaka explained that if consumers are informed properly, they can make the choice of whether to purchase the real thing or take their chances with counterfeit products.

Starting with the use of hard-to-copy hologram badges (which can be verified with a special viewing film), Canon is taking steps to ensure that counter—feiters have a harder time infiltrating the market.

Other visual and branding devices used by Canon are country-specific tags on its packaging, reseller certification logos, intensive advertising on "how-to-spot-the-fake" products and the use of different company mascots to identify original boxes.

The company hopes that these measures will help inform the public as well as deter counterfeiters from continuing their illegal trade.