Copy Cat

From a Chinese equipment manufacturer … see exhibit below.

They have patents, God bless them, and they are asserting that, as such, counterfeiting is forbidden.

That’s not a term I’d have ever thought of using.

I always thought counterfeiting was the production and sales of fakes, complete with the original trademark, designed to fool the customer that they had bought an original.

That’s not something patents explicitly cover.

Coming from the land of counterfeiters and copycats, said misplaced unjustified threats are hilarious.

However there may be genius at work here…

If they had said “Patented products; copying not allowed”; this could be considered as an unjustified threat. This because many cases of patent enforcement fail for one reason or another so enforcement has to go through the proper channels and be devoid of threats for fear of counter-suit.

However what they said was “Patented products; counterfeiting not allowed”. The two parts of this statement are unconnected. A counterfeit might infringe a patent right but would certainly breach trademark rights. So this statement couldn’t be construed as a unjustified threat per se but might still discourage the uneducated.

An accident or not? I like it.

Clever buggers those Chinese.