Counterfeiting is the act of imitating or forging currency, legal documents, goods, drugs, and other authentic items. This has been a serious issue for many years, but no solution has been created yet to eradicate this problem completely. It has developed over the years as technology improved,which has made forgery a lot less difficult and the documents seem more realistic. Over the past decades, counterfeiting has been increasing rapidly, as its rate has quadrupled since 2009. The cause of this issue is mainly due to technology and money. Counterfeiting became a lot easier with the improvement of technology and people were able to profit a lot of money from forging currency. This problem has not been solved yet because many countries are reluctant to participate in solving this issue, for a lot of money will be lost if the attempted solution to this problem fails. Many people have also been victims of counterfeiting when they bought forged goods or when their identity was stolen. Otherwise known as “identity theft”, people are able to counterfeit other people’s licenses, money, tax forms, etc.

This problem is spreading worldwide and everyone is at a high chance of being a victim.

The United Nations has chosen to get involved in this issue of counterfeiting because many documents had been getting forged and many criminals had been writing and issuing laws that made it seem like the UN had proposed them.

The main achievement accomplished by the UN to help resolve this issue was the creation of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

The primary purpose of the ACTA was to target counterfeit items and create a new governing body that would focus mainly on the issue of counterfeiting. Besides the UN, other countries and committees have taken several steps as well. INTERPOL arranged a 2-day workshop on September 16-17, 2014 for countries all over the world to attend with the goal of developing resolutions to prevent further counterfeiting of legal documents. In order to achieve this goal, at the meeting, many countries suggested the attempt of creating developments in technologies and document security after reviewing currency counterfeiting and regional counterfeit currency situations. Furthermore, countries like France has created a P regulation in the French IP code in October 20, 2007 against infringement. Although eradicating counterfeiting completely is not highly possible at the current moment, with the help of many countries and committees, it is likely that the rate of counterfeiting can decrease within the next couple of decades.