This & That, Ceci et Cela

While product piracy and counterfeiting becomes increasingly widespread, another dimension has reared itself: brand hijacking or corporate identity theft. Most counterfeiting usually centres on specific products within industries like electronic hardware, software, or luxury goods, not the companies themselves. With personal identity theft, the thief assumes the identity of the victim by utilizing personal information (social insurance number, credit card details, etc). The corporate version involves organizations fraudulently assuming and conducting business with the identity of another company. For example, electronics firm NEC recently discovered that a large, extremely organized group had set up a parallel brand faking the entire NEC company top to bottom, including management and operation layers.
The counterfeiters had a network of more than 50 factories in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Posing as NEC, the pirates used the factories to produce fake NEC products, and even developed entirely new product ranges under the NEC brand name. Indeed, some of the factors that tipped off the real NEC included receiving complaints about products that they had never made or provided warranties for. –Imagine getting a call complaining about your square doughnuts when you’ve only ever made round doughnuts!
The IHT article also notes that the factories involved cannot necessarily be blamed; many of them believed they were dealing with the real NEC. They even paid royalties to the fake NEC for the rights to produce “licensed” products. In return, they received bogus paperwork certifying them as authorized partners/licensees so they had no reason to suspect otherwise. Additionally, while the counterfeiting occurs in China, in many cases, the person or organization placing and funding the orders is not in China.