The European Union’s Intellectual Property Office released two reports: Online Copyright Infringement in the EU (December 4, 2020) and European Citizens and Intellectual Property (November 17, 2020).
European Citizens and Intellectual Property
Also referred to as the IP Perceptions report, this study tracked public perceptions of intellectual property, its forms, and the degrees to which IP is respected in the digital world. Â The EUIPO ran more than 25,000 interviews with EU residents aged 15 and above provide a full picture of the evolution of citizen perception of intellectual property rights in the EU.
Increasing awareness of piracy’s impact
The IP Perceptions survey, which was conducted across 27 EU states between June 1 and July 6, 2020, found that the percentage of people who were willing to pay for content increased from 25% in 2017, to 42% in 2020, a 69% increase. Â People are also researching more, as to whether Web sites offer legal content (up from 2017’s 14% to 2020’s 20%).
Another key finding was that as people grow to understand intellectual property, they are less likely to engage in infringing behavior; and they are twice as likely to link IP with artists and creative professionals than they were three years ago (increasing from 10% awareness to 20%).
Online Copyright Infringement findings
Two patterns emerged with this research: first, that piracy happens predominantly with successful movies that had international release, and second, that films released within their country of production but not internationally suffered piracy outside of their home markets that was greater than their commercial success at home. Â In both cases, recent movies were most likely to be pirated.
This study was based on an analysis of the 30 most frequently pirated creative works in each of the EU Member States, including 316 films, 500 music artists and 309 TV series. Data on consumption of pirated content was purchased from MUSO, a commercial data provider, while data on legal consumption of film (measured by admissions to theatres) was obtained from the European Audiovisual Observatory’s Lumiere database
Click to view the reports:
EUIPO Links:
- Visit EUIPO’s Observatory site, which provides a library of research and data and status reports on IP infringement.
Why they matter
The Online Copyright Infringement report data is also interesting in that it provides an early measure of the impact of COVID on consumption practices.
