The Southern Daily of March 13, reports (in Chinese) that the Shenzhen Administration for Industry and Commerce (AIC) announced the top 10 Intellectual Property Protection Cases for the year 2006 in Shenzhen on 12 March 2007. The cases have involved in household appliances, mobile phones, medicines and general daily supplies. One of the top 10 cases concerns the infringement of Bluetooth earphones.
A co-operative effort between Bluetooth SIG Inc., the local authorities and Asia’s Brand Protection Consultancy, I-OnAsia Ltd has led to the arrest of principals of Shenzhen BlueBird Hi-Tech Company for Infringement of the Bluetooth SIG, Inc registered Trademark. This case has now been transferred to the Public Security Bureau for criminal prosecution.
On 17 July last year, the Administration for Industry and Commerce conducted a search on Shenzhen Bluebird Technology Ltd (深圳藍鳥科技有限公司) which was located on the 4/F, Fanen Building, No. 14, YueHua Road, MeiLinYueHua Industrial Park, FuTian Area. (福田區梅林越華工業區越華路14號凡恩大廈4樓) On-the-scene, 2868 pieces of suspected counterfeit “Bluetooth” earphones, 23,000 pieces of labels and 7,460 pieces of packaging material with infringed “Bluetooth” trademark were seized. Due to the fact that the litigant is not authorized and is presumed to have produced counterfeit “Bluetooth” earphones, the behavior has been suspected a crime. The bureau has then transferred this case to the Public Security Bureau for further criminal prosecution. Two suspects have been arrested.
Update: Derek Elmer, founding partner and chief executive officer of I-OnAsia takes a deeper look at the crackdown of counterfeit in this case, read here.
