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The illegal business of faking products, besides infringing the intellectual property rights of original producers, puts simple consumers at risk. One of the dangers coming from counterfeits may is ingestion of fake pharmaceuticals.

The majority of fake products are manufactured in China. The country houses producers that violate the intellectual property a many firms, and the biggest damage is brought to manufacturers from the United States. There are a lot of huge factories built in the country. These factories produce goods that have exactly the same look as the products of original brands from the United States.

The problem with Chinese manufactures has an impact not only on U.S. producers but on various firms worldwide.

Due to mass counterfeiting a lot of people lose their jobs. This refers to the countries where fake products are brought in numerous quantities. For instance faked textile products brought from China into Nigeria caused local factories a lot of pain, with many people losing their jobs as factories were not able to compete.

A great damage is brought to economies by the faked CDs and DVDs. The music and movie industry suffers a lot. In one of the studies on fake pharmaceuticals, performed by Paul Newton of Oxford University, he found that a huge number of fake malaria drugs were sold in Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. He stated that "...about half of the Artesunate contained no active ingredient. So, logically, if malaria is a public health problem in Southeast Asia and is potentially fatal, if people are taking these drugs that contain starch and chalk, they are very unlikely to survive their malaria infection."

"In one shop, a hundred thousand fake artesunate were offered for sale. So, they are not being produced in somebody's kitchen. They are produced on an industrial scale. And if organized crime is involved, which seems very likely, then that makes it much harder to do anything about."

Working as the general director of National Administration for Food, Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Dora Akunyili decided to combat the producers of fake goods in the country.

"The problem of counterfeit drugs and other regulated products is rapidly rearing its ugly head in developed countries and this is fueled by purchase of drugs via the internet. The negative impact of counterfeit drugs and other regulated products knows no boundaries. Resistant strains of micro-organisms do not need visa to travel from country to country," she stated.

Despite the trouble with fake products a lot of people still consider purchasing them, the main reason being the low price. Today some of the most faked products on the international arena include: mobile phones, music and video players, shoes and clothing. Some examples of fake products are listed below.

Nokia N95

Here's an example of a Fake Nokia N95 produced in China. Although the phone at a first glance looks as the original the first thing to notice is that the fake Nokia is not a slider as the original. In addition the counterfeit is bigger in size.

This is a qualitative fake, since it includes a touch screen, a 3 Megapixel camera as well as Bluetooth connectivity. The phone also supports the function of recognizing hand-writing. E-PDA V16 has dual sim cards and supports microSD memory cards.

Unfortunately the phone will not be of much use in the United States due to the fact that it's dual-band 900/1800.

iPod

Because Apple gained a lot of popularity over the last few years, its products were almost instantly copied. But there's more to this. The producers of fake products develop their personal versions of Apple's famous iPod and are selling them as the original.

The fake iPods at first seems to be very close to the genuine device. However, the fake iPod nano features a somewhat different shape of the screen. In addition it has a non-standard headphone jack and there's no dock connector. One of the major differences is the interface of the counterfeit device. The control circle works only if pressing the buttons while the real thing allows rotating the circle.

Nike

Here are the two products featuring the brand image of Nike, one of them is a fake. The one on the left is the real thing while the right one is a fake. By looking closer one may notice that the fake model has a "squarish" toe box as well as a sharper heel tap that is set higher. The fake Nike is made of an inferior quality material in comparison to the genuine product.

There are also differences in color, box, tongue of the shoe, label and lines and fonts between the real and fake Nike.

PlayStation 3 and PSP Portable and Xbox 360

These consoles may look similar but the quality is certainly different.

Most of such products are developed in China and their names are slightly different.

All in all the producers of counterfeit goods try not to change radically the name of the brand, which is why customers may spot such names as X-Game 360 and Powerstation 3.

Perfumes

Despite the short lasting effect of fake perfumes and far from original odor, a lot of people still buy fake perfumes that only have the brand name illegally printed on them.

These perfumes have the name designers name and almost the same bottle as the genuine product. In addition these fake perfumes have identical label and box as the original. Street vendors sell these bottles for $20 each.

Please note that these are only a few examples from the huge illegal business of producing fake goods. Fighting such illegal activity take a lot of time and money. This is why some companies that produce genuine products often close their eyes on the fact that someone copies their brand. Still it is up to the customer to decide what to buy, someone prefers price over quality, others vice verse.