We have all heard of some form of piracy, everything from something as simple as downloading pirated music & software to pirated items such as recordable media with fake Manufacturer Identification Codes. With such a high rate of piracy in China, one would expect to find Chinese companies manufacturing pirated goods, however after two years of investigation with Chinese, Taiwanese and Japanese law enforcement agencies in what started as tracing the source pirated NEC goods, they uncovered that the pirates were faking NEC's entire company!
These pirates have set up various factories and warehouses across China and Taiwan delivering counterfeit goods with NEC branding, including CD & DVD recordable discs, DVD players, MP3 players, various other electronic goods as well as many products not made by the true Japanese NEC company. NEC estimates that the pirates have made substantial profit from the operation and the investigations are still continuing. Even though NEC was well aware of this issue for the past two years, they did not want to make any public announcement until now to avoid compromising its investigation.
The
counterfeit organisation was well planned as the investigation revealed that the pirates went as far as collecting licensing royalties, issuing Official NEC brand looking warranty and service documents and shipping their products in what looked like authentic NEC packaging. Basically, the pirates were counterfeiting pretty much everything the main company would do and not just the products themselves as what other others would generally stick to counterfeiting. Thanks to our staff members Jan70 and Womble for letting us know about this news:
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The full detailed article can be read here. |
It is one thing to see organisations that just pirate the goods themselves, but when pirates go to fake an entire company, it makes it quite tricky to determine if this is the real company or not, particularly since the documentation and packaging are usually the main giveaway for a company creating pirated goods. Unfortunately when it comes to faulty goods, consumers cannot simply return them to the proper Japanese NEC company, since the company will not provide any warranty for products they did not produce. As NEC is a major producer of optical disc products as well as a backer of the HD DVD next generation disc format, it is unclear if these pirates were also involved in pirating NEC's range of optical drives.
Source: Herald Tribune Technology
