Damn, And I Just Interviewed There

The Chinese manufacturing industry is well known for its counterfeiting expertise; put out a hot-selling product today, I guarantee you a cheap knock-off of it will show up on the streets of Beijing within a week, selling for half the price (and half the life-span).

Some would-be Chinese bandits took it to the next level; they knocked off an entire company!

NEC, a once-great electronic/computer giant, is the victim of...identity theft, Chinese style. Reports filtering back to the Tokyo headquarters of the Japanese electronics giant NEC in mid-2004 alerted managers that pirated keyboards and recordable CD and DVD discs bearing the company's brand were on sale in retail outlets in Beijing and Hong Kong. The company hired an investigator to track down the pirates.

After two years and thousands of hours of investigation in conjunction with law enforcement agencies in China, Taiwan and Japan, the company said it had uncovered something far more ambitious than clandestine workshops turning out inferior copies of NEC products. The pirates were faking the entire company.

Evidence seized in raids on 18 factories and warehouses in China and Taiwan over the past year showed that the counterfeiters had set up what amounted to a parallel NEC brand with links to a network of more than 50 electronics factories in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

In the name of NEC, the pirates copied NEC products, and went as far as developing their own range of consumer electronic products - everything from home entertainment centers to MP3 players. They also coordinated manufacturing and distribution, collecting all the proceeds.

Steve Vickers, president of International Risk, a Hong Kong-based company that NEC hired to investigate the piracy, said documents and computer records seized by the police during the factory and warehouse raids had revealed the scope of the piracy.

These records showed that the counterfeiters carried NEC business cards, commissioned product research and development in the company's name and signed production and supply orders.

He said they also required factories to pay royalties for "licensed" products and issued official-looking warranty and service documents.

Some of the factories that were raided had erected bogus NEC signs and shipped their products packaged in authentic looking boxes and display cases.

NEC said about 50 products were counterfeited, including home entertainment systems, MP3 players, batteries, microphones and DVD players. Many of these pirated items were not part of the genuine NEC product range.

The investigation also revealed that fake goods from these factories were on sale in Taiwan, mainland China, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, North Africa, the Middle East and Europe.