Well it turns out that fake Apple stores are much more lucrative than previously thought. A few weeks after the very existence of fake Apple stores was brought to the forefront, Reuters is reporting that authorities in the Chinese city of Kumming have happened upon another 22 counterfeit Apple retail stores. Initially, only 5 were believed to be in operation but apparently this scammy operation runs a lot deeper.
China’s Administration for Industry and Commerce in the Yunnan provincial capital said the stores have been ordered to stop using Apple’s logo after Apple China accused them of unfair competition and violating its registered trademark, state media said on Thursday.
The market watchdog agency said it would set up a complaint hotline and boost monitoring, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
It did not say if the shops were selling knock-off Apple products or genuine but smuggled models.
Countless unauthorized resellers of Apple and other brands’ electronic products throughout China sell the real thing but buy their goods overseas and smuggle them into the country to escape taxes.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Apple has a lot of thank-you cards to write this year.
Apple, not surprisingly, isn’t keen on letting others trample over its intellectual property. Earlier this week the company filed a lawsuit seeking to eradicate all of those knockoff Apple retail stores, including one outfit in Queens, NYC with a storefront that reads “Apple Story”
August 11th, 2011 at 7:01 pm
There’s one in Xi’An that needs to be shut down….