ICCE said that at the end of 2019 Epson responded to customer complaints about the presence of counterfeit inks with a joint raid alongside the Turkish police, resulting in the seizure of thousands of counterfeit items.
During a raid in Istanbul in late 2019 thousands of counterfeit bottles for Epson’s cartridge free printers, as well as large amounts of labels and packing materials bearing the Epson logo were seized, together with counterfeit products of other brands.
ICCE said that an Epson spokesperson emphasised that counterfeit printing supplies results in an estimated $3 billion (€2.74 billion) loss to the global economy. ICCE emphasised that fake products can not only cause irreversible damage to printing equipment, but user’s health can be damaged by the toxic chemicals used in counterfeit ink consumables.
Epson is a member of ICCE, the Imaging Consumables Coalition of Europe, Middle East and Africa. ICCE has been operating since 1997 and is an authoritative, effective and respected global voice leading the fight against intellectual property crime in imaging consumables. It is the collaboration between law enforcement and ICCE members that enables the effective pooling and exchange of intelligence which achieves results in the fight against counterfeiters.
ICCE concluded: “The Istanbul raid is a good example of this collective approach.”