Chinese police are offering $ 30 million false Lego businesses
Chinese anti-IP offenses are not playing with, a lesson as a bunch of suspected counterfeiters may have learned after millions of yuan in the business of making fake Lego were busted.
The raid took place in the coastal city of Shanghai on Tuesday with four suspects being arrested, according to a media briefing published on the municipality's official social media account on Friday. Over 200 million yuan assets (around US $ 30 million) were also seized, including streamlined products and packages.
The investigation that led to Tuesday's operation has been underway since October last year when the local law enforcement first discovered the sale of the allegedly false puzzle carrying "striking similarity" to the Danish toy maker's star product, briefing says.
The suspects were found to have replicated Lego's design and production began in 201[ads1]5. The alleged fakes were made to the market in 2016 under the brand "Lepin", a name reminiscent of the Danish company, but was priced at only one tenth of how much genuine Lego jigsaw costs in China, local media Paper.com said an anonymous investigator. Goods were sold not only on China's e-commerce platforms, but also exported to Russia and Germany, according to the officer.
The forms allegedly used in the production of the fake Lego toys. / Photo taken by law enforcement and published by Shanghai Fabu, the official Weibo account of the municipality's government.
The forms allegedly used in the production of the fake Lego toys. / Photo taken by the police authority and published by Shanghai Fabu, the official Weibo account of the municipality's government.
The investigation is still ongoing before the case is moved to court. The suspects may face criminal cases if the court expects them to violate the law of violation and made a significant illegal profit.
The epidemic of counterfeiting of established brands in China has slowed down in recent years as the government puts its feet into protecting intellectual property.
On the same day, Shanghai launched the government public on the matter, four government agencies jointly launched the "Sword Net 2019" campaign aimed at violating copyright infringements on the Internet, especially "paraphrasing of plagiarism" by so-called "media" accounts and illegal and irregular activities of image agencies.
The initiative of the National Intellectual Property Administration, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Public Security, is the operation set to run from late April to late October.
The top picture is taken by law enforcement and published by Shanghai Fabu, the official Weibo account of the municipality's government. The unfinished puzzles that were seized by the Shanghai police during Tuesday's Tuesday to the production site, where the location is not specified.
