On the morning of April 23, the first stop of Quality Brands Protection Committee of China Association of Enterprises with Foreign Investment (QBPC) Membership Service Journey Case Sharing Series- Group Wang Manufactures and Sells Counterfeit "CommScope" Registered Trademark Cabling Products was successfully held online. Nearly 40 member company representatives attended the meeting.
"In recent top ten cases review, the participants could only get a glimpse of the successful cases due to the time limit on each presentation. In order to provide members with more opportunities to learn about the highlights and difficulties of the cases, membership service committee will carry out a series of case sharing activities as part of the membership service journey. We plan to hold a case sharing meeting every one to two weeks, which is expected to cover most of the nominated cases." Membership Service Committee Vice Chair Carol Lin said. She welcomed and thanked members and two speakers Wei Yang and Waye Wei for their participation.
Wei Yang first introduced the company. CommScope played a key role in the world's advanced communications network. Through unremitting technological evolution, there were infrastructures provided to realize the interconnection of people and technology, and integrated wiring products designed and produced by CommScope were in world leading position. They were widely used in finance, medical care, education, transportation, sports, entertainment, telecommunications, public utilities and other key industries to help customers create, innovate, design and build faster and better wired and wireless networks.
However, in order to take advantage of CommScope’s good image, excellent product quality and wide customer base, some illegal manufacturers produce and sell fake integrated wiring products for profiteering. In order to protect the interests of its customers and maintain the brand image, CommScope established an anti-counterfeiting department in 2005 and invested a lot of labor and resources to combat counterfeiting in response to rampant counterfeiting in the market. The CommScope team focused on counterfeit products in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East markets worldwide as well as the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta.
CommScope authorized representative Waye Wei started from the initial discovery of counterfeit products on the internet and sorted out the progress of the case. Waye said, "The discovery came from online monitoring. A Taobao store called "AMP Integrated Cable Store" had a high sales revenue with a unit price slightly higher than CommScope's red line. Besides, AMP was also CommScope’s brand, which might cause misunderstandings among consumers.” After several test purchases, they discovered that counterfeiters reclaimed the outer packaging of genuine network cables and used the anti-counterfeit labels for counterfeit network cables. The counterfeit products had been used in a school project in Honghu City, Hubei Province. Since then, the CommScope team started a series of investigations.
After rigorous investigation and evidence collection, eight Taobao stores of the Group Wang, several warehouses in Guangzhou and Wuhan, and a large supply factory were found with the support by Alibaba’s big data and Qichacha (a verification service). Approximately 740,000 counterfeit products were seized in the crackdown, and the amount involved was as high as 20 million yuan.
In the Q&A session, representatives from Siemens, Thermo Fisher and Underwriters Laboratories discussed with Waye on how to screen suspicious targets on the internet, cooperation with public security and Alibaba big data at the early stage, supervision by public security, and mixed sale of genuine and fake. Waye indicated that the CommScope price red line and long-term online platform monitoring data provided a great reference for screening suspicious targets; the early intervention by the public security authority resolved the jurisdiction issue, and then the cooperation with Alibaba led to more accurate analysis; the main reason for the supervision of the public security authority was that the amount involved was large, and the counterfeit network cables had flowed into the project of a school in Honghu City, Hubei Province, causing high risks to information security; mixed sale of genuine and fake would definitely have negative effect on the case. In the absence of stock, sales records could hardly be traced. If the price of the sold product had been significantly lower than the market median price while the same or similar infringing products had been seized on the spot, the sales recorded by the third-party platform could be recognized as the infringing products’ sales. In the CommScope case just shared, the infringer was unable to provide evidence of the sale of genuine goods, many fake goods were seized, and the supplier's factory was not officially authorized. As a result, all sold products were recognized by the court as infringing products.
The meeting enabled participants to gain an in-depth understanding about online infringement cases in terms of discovery, tracking and the final crackdown. Members also learnt from the experience of cooperating with law enforcement agencies and online platforms. At the same time, members got more knowledge about CommScope. At present, QBPC’s official WeChat account (ID: qbpc2020) is sharing a series of nominated cases. Please subscribe to learn more about the case details.
The member companies participating in this event were ABRO, Johnson & Johnson, Nike, Qualcomm, Perfect, Allergan, Applied Material, Burberry, CommScope, CAPRI HOLDINGS, Danfoss, Dupont, Eaton, Genius GmbH, Jaguar Land Rover, Levi Strauss &Co., LVMH Asia Pacific Ltd., MGA Entertainment, New Balance, Philips, SANOFI, Siemens, S. C. Johnson & Son, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Tommy Hilfiger, Toyota, Underwriters Laboratories, Huawei and REACT.