On June 21, 2016, Market Regulation Administration in Suzhou Industrial Park (SI) of Jiangsu Province raided a warehouse following a tip from the public, and seized 59,904 items of cosmetics involving 72 brands including Kiel's, Dior, Benefit and Fresh. A man named Lv failed to provide legal origin and authenticity certificate for these products. Investigation showed that the perpetrator rented the location for doing branded cosmetics business from December, 2012. The products seized on scene were valued at 4.6792 million yuan, calculated based on the selling prices of the cybershop. After sampling test and appraisal of brand holders, for the above-listed four brands only, 13,775 items of 23 (out of 72) types of products were determined counterfeits, valued over 1.63 million yuan; 40 types were not infringing products and the remaining six classifications could not be determined genuine or not. In view of the high value of the infringing products, the perpetrator's behavior was suspected of selling counterfeit products of registered trademarks, triggering transfer of the case to local police on March 23, 2017. Later investigation would suggest the value of the counterfeits sold by Lv logging at over 5 million yuan. Ten of the 16 suspects have been arrested and sought by prosecution while the remaining six are out on bail pending for trial.
Impact of the Case:
In this case, the perpetrator sold products through an e-commerce platform, namely Taobao.com, a novel operation mode in distributing infringing and counterfeit products. During the investigation, local police traced to the upstream supplier and the manufacturing location by following the leads, scoring a bigger victory. In this case, all government departments shared information and collaborated effectively to ensure a successful investigation.
(Editor Shao Jingjing)
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