China Cracks Down On Fake Apple Stores

angry tapir writes "The Chinese city of Kunming has stopped 22 fake Apple stores from illegally using the company's iconic trademarks after Apple lodged a complaint with authorities. Kunming authorities found 20 unauthorized Apple resellers. Currently, 11 of those resellers are being investigated. Two other stores were discovered for related violations. Slashdot first discussed the mushrooming of fake Apple Stores in July."

Comments

I hope Apple knows that China doesn't fuck around.

[stonedcat]

I wonder how many people will be executed for this whole ordeal.

Re:I hope Apple knows that China doesn't fuck arou

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe, but look at it from the flipside: China generally takes a very lax approach to Western copyright infringement. Them snapping to action to shut these stores down implies that China is afraid of Apple. Seriously. They fucked around with Google just like anyone else, but they're running scared under the fear that Apple will crack down on them.

Do the MacHeads realize just how much raw, unchecked power they're giving the lunatics at Apple? God help us all, China is afraid of them now!

In other related news, Investigation is over.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Chinese city of Kunming has arrested a counterfeit group of investigators from shutting down 22 dejure Apple stores, and have instead focussed on shutting down the counterfeit City of Kunming and it's officers. "It's a crazy day, indeed! We had a counterfeit city with it's own investigators arresting actual registered Apple franchises, and when these counterfeit officers were captured they were operating out of our very own city buildings! 2 sides to every business card I guess." We are currently looking into a new investigation of news reporting for nerds in which one man Wob 'CorporalPita` Marda alleges the counterfeiters have cloned his Technology News website FRAFDOT.ORG into a counterfeit domain SLASHDOT.ORG to misreport investigations that don't exist but in counterfeit City of Kunming."

Re:I hope Apple knows that China doesn't fuck arou

[mattventura]

I'm guessing that it's because Apple uses China for their manufacturing, and it would hurt the Chinese economy if they were to take their business elsewhere.

Re:I hope Apple knows that China doesn't fuck arou

[blai]

China doesn't execute people for these relatively tiny sins. 50k yuan in the judge's pocket will get these people out in a week.

Re:I hope Apple knows that China doesn't fuck arou

[ColdWetDog]

And I'm guessing that they're just paying lip service to Apple, copyrights, patents and the like. And as soon as the store owners start paying the right people, it will be business as usual (again).

Re:Curious

[ColdWetDog]

And too lazy to read blogs about blogs about blogs ... Are these fake Apple stores that sell fake Apple products, or stores that sell regular Apple gear and just don't want to pay up for the logo rights and maintain the price policies of Apple?

I'm too lazy to respond to ignorant, lazy AC's.

Re:I hope Apple knows that China doesn't fuck arou

[Dthief]

Damn right we do!....

Though I'm sure they are working on how to overtake us in that as well

Re:I hope Apple knows that China doesn't fuck arou

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Yeah? How many USAsians are executed for non-violent crimes vs. China? Citation, pls.

Re:I hope Apple knows that China doesn't fuck arou

[Nidi62]

I wonder how many people will be executed for this whole ordeal.

They wont be executed. They will just be fined and arrested, and sentenced into whatever prison camp pays or is owned by the local government authorities. If you think prison is big business in the US, you haven't seen anything until you look at China. Forced labor, manufacturing, hell, even WoW goldfarming is done in Chinese prisons. Why kill someone when they can make you a couple hundred dollars worth of profit a month without having to worry about the government coming after you?

Re:Curious

[That Guy From Mrktng]

I have an idea, let's ask the free press of.. or the government accountabilit.. how about some inside.... wow, probably and ironically the only one that can answer that is a blogger tunneling his way across the the great firewall.

Fake Steve Jobs

[Ukab the Great]

Declined to comment on the closing the fake Apple Stores.

League of disgrace

[AliasMarlowe]

Capital punishment numbers are a little uncertain for China, but estimated to be appallingly large (two orders of magnitude more appalling than those of the USA). In fact, the USA was ranked fifth worldwide in total numbers legally executed in 2010. It was surpassed by Iran, Yemen, and North Korea as well as China.

On a per-capita basis, the USA is clearly not in the lead, and nowhere close to the top. In addition to the four countries listed above, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Equatorial Guinnea, Somalia, and a bunch of others have higher per capita executions. Disgracefully, the USA's score was 46 in 2010, or about 0.15 per million persons.

Re:League of disgrace

[BasilBrush]

If you want to see real disgrace check out the list of countries that have executed juvenile offenders since 1990.

To save the click:

The People's Republic of China (PRC), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United States and Yemen.

So if Apple was smart

[SilverJets]

They'd wait for Chinese authorities to seize the stores as part of the case and then buy them for next to nothing. Already set up stores with the same look and feel as a legitimate store though they probably need some minor touch ups to bring them fully up to Apple spec. But...wow....they could get a new retail location for practically nothing.

Re:So if Apple was smart

[BasilBrush]

If Apple was smart, they'd be the largest company in America, and have more cash then the US government.

vs. the US???

[ebonum]

1. I've read that the products sold were genuine.

2. Go to rural Alabama and ask those people about US intellectual property law. See how well they do. Somehow Americans expect people in a distant country who grew up under a communist regime ( not so communist for only the last 10 years. This is Kunming - not Shanghai or Beijing or Shenzhen ) to understand the laws of a country 5,000 miles away when a lot of Americans don't know American law. Then try asking people in Alabama making wood products to be shipped to China about the intricacies of Chinese building codes. If they don't know all the answers, what do you expect? We should put them in jail for not following Chinese laws?

Honestly people. Chinese in Kunming lived in a world from 200 years ago until just recently.

Re:vs. the US???

[poity]

Point 2 is irrelevant. No one is expecting the consumers to know all that you've listed, that's not a rebuttal to anything. The expectation is on the businessmen who establish these American-branded retail shops internationally -- in which case YES they should know their shit, and when they intentionally abuse the system they should bear the consequences.

It's a shame

[Y-Crate]

All the effort that goes into creating knock-offs could be used to make something truly original.

Re:It's a shame

[crow_t_robot]

From all of the current news reports about China pumping out knock-offs it would certainly seem this way but for hundreds, if not thousands of years, the people that received positions of power in the government had to not only be extremely well-educated in writing and speaking but also in painting and poetry. I am definitely not an expert on Chinese culture but I do know that painting and poetry (creative skills) were held (maybe not recently) as equally high priorities as any other type of education.

Re:It's a shame

[biodata]

Like a cheap Apple product?

Re:It's a shame

[xhrit]

Right, because no one uses notable Chinese inventions such as paper, the compass, gunpowder, the printing press, money, land mines, cannons, exploding cannonballs, multistage rockets, the fork, noodles, the crossbow, stringed instruments, kites, manned flight, matches, natural gas as fuel, cameras, playing cards, steelworking, tea, or toilet paper anymore.

All inventions that have fallen by the wayside. Wow, if only the chinese were more creative they could have influenced modern culture even more then the oldest and most powerful nation on the face of the planet already has...

No, it's cool. you can make broad generalizations about one of the largest groups of people on earth. Humans like you are not a smart people. Opinionated yes. Smart, no.

Re:I hope Apple knows that China doesn't fuck arou

[ShanghaiBill]

If you think prison is big business in the US, you haven't seen anything until you look at China.

On a per capita basis, the USA imprisons four times as many people as China.

Re:I hope Apple knows that China doesn't fuck arou

[Solandri]

The Economist had an interesting breakdown of an iPhone's manufacture. It actually looks like the U.S., Korea, Taiwan, and Japan are the biggest beneficiaries from the iPhone's manufacture. Well, aside from Apple itself that is. Foxconn's slice of the iPhone pie is minuscule.

Re:I hope Apple knows that China doesn't fuck arou

[mwvdlee]

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison), USA has more prisoners than china even in absolute numbers!
Some quick calculations tell me USA actually imprissions over five times as many people as China per capita.

Re:I hope Apple knows that China doesn't fuck arou

[BasilBrush]

I wonder how many people will be executed for this whole ordeal.

I remember during the cold war, all sorts of nonsense was talked in the west about Russia. I see that now America is challenged in economic might by China, they are now object of the disinformation and wild conjecture.

Re:I hope Apple knows that China doesn't fuck arou

[LynnwoodRooster]

See, "Apple" is a registered trademark inside China, and China DOES pay attention to its own internal IP. I have several US patents and a few Chinese patents; I've actually walked into Chinese factories and seen my US patents getting knocked off (and quietly copied down the names of the US customers, and we had a nice "licensing" talk when I got back to the US). I've also seen one of my Chinese patents getting knocked off - a quick call to the local customs and IP bureau and things were shut down REAL quick, and the Chinese company licensed up as well.

.
Like most countries, China doesn't give a rip about your overseas IP; if it's not Chinese, it doesn't matter. Likewise in the US - if you infringe a Chinese or Japanese patent in the US, the US doesn't care. Funny how that works - countries only care about IP registered in their own countries (and this includes the EU where you can register with the EU and PCT, but still need to apply for patents in each individual country for protection). Apple now has a trademark on "Apple" for computers and electronics, so the Chinese authorities took action. No trademark in China? The Chinese government wouldn't do anything...

Re:I hope Apple knows that China doesn't fuck arou

[gnasher719]

I wonder how many people will be executed for this whole ordeal.

What idiots vote this nonsense "interesting"? China has executed people for selling milk with generous amounts of grinded plastic added, making hundred thousands sick. China has executed people for stealing millions from state owned businesses. China doesn't execute people for opening a shop with a false Apple logo.

Land of the free?

[TapeCutter]

Thanks for the link, the map is really informative, from an Aussie's POV I find it unsurprising we are in the same band as Canada but I didn't expect China to be in there too.

I recently read another appalling statistical comparison ( somewhere on scienceblogs ), it said; -
The 27 nations of western Europe (including the UK) have a total population of 500M and a prison population of 600K (total for ALL crimes). The USA has a total population of 300M and a prison population of 500K (DRUG crimes only).

[citation] - According to my legacy 1950's wetware.

The fake stores have even hired a new CEO

[Registered Coward v2]

Fake Steve Jobs, of course.