Intellectual property is extremely complex to describe in a few words. But if we had to do it, then we would say that it includes the creations of the human mind that can materialize. Of course, those creations that meet the requirements prescribed by law can be protected by certain forms of intellectual property rights. Even this is too abstract, so most perceive intellectual property as some rights that refer to something they don’t often encounter.
However, the reality is different as intellectual property rights are something we literally deal with every day. The song we listen to in the morning while getting ready for work is someone’s work, the cars we drive are protected by dozens of patents that companies from the auto industry wanted to protect the innovations of their engineers/inventors, we read emails on a computer that usually has licensed software, we will choose in the store, the product that has a better thought-out industrial design, and in the evening we will drink wine with a geographical indication of origin as a kind of proof of quality.
It seems that there is no segment of life in which there is no intellectual property, and that is its importance, regardless of the fact that we are often unaware of it. The importance of intellectual property is most often understood when we feel the consequences on our own skin. Sometimes literally.
The company Alma Lasers is a leading global innovator and manufacturer of lasers based on light, radio frequency and ultrasound, which are intended for beautifying the body. They are absolutely revolutionary in many respects. A lot of applied knowledge, energy, patience and time were needed to create today’s most modern Soprano lasers. For someone who didn’t invest in any of that, a free ride on other people’s work sometimes seemed attractive, making in specific cases more or less faithful copies of the Soprano laser, but only in appearance. What essentially differentiates original and counterfeit lasers is the very contents of the little black box. In recent years, Mirkov Law, in cooperation with the Alma Lasers company, has been successfully removing counterfeit Soprano lasers from the Southeastern European market. Of course, sometimes a counterfeit laser finds its way onto the market. The prices at which such counterfeit lasers are provided are two, three or more times lower than those provided for original ones, which is attractive to not a few people, without thinking too much about the consequences. In better cases, counterfeit lasers have a placebo effect while in others they leave permanent scars on the body and generally leave health consequences. And only then, when you feel it on your skin, you start thinking about the importance of original products, patents and intellectual property in general.
A few months ago, the Alma Lasers company made an interesting video pointing out the problems of counterfeit lasers, which can be viewed on YouTube.
Therefore, if we return to the question from the title, the answer would be: Yes, the infringement of intellectual property is dangerous to our health. Don’t allow yourself to understand the importance of intellectual property too late, be smarter than that.
If you would like to know more about the original Soprano lasers or intellectual property in general in any of the Southeast European jurisdictions where we provide legal services, please feel free to contact us.