Click to Enlarge Gallery Preview
A Canon USA executive involved in the legal assault on counterfeiters agreed to talk about his efforts in the photography industry on the condition that we not name him in this story, for reasons of personal safety. There's a widespread assumption that organized crime has a hand in counterfeiting rings.
Are cameras next in line? "It's happening now in South America," he says. "We found them many years ago in Brazil and Paraguay. There were Canon logos affixed to cheap generic cameras. It hasn't happened in the U.S. or Canada yet; people are smart enough not to buy such cheap-looking cameras."
Batteries for digital cameras are a main concern for Canon, not least because it has received three reports of accidents involving meltdowns of fake batteries in the past few years. "We continually make test-purchases on eBay," says the Canon executive. "We try to buy every one of our items being offered." Sixteen of the 29 batteries he bought in the first six months of 2007 were fakes.
In 2006, Canon sent eight cease-and-desist orders to distributors it believes were selling counterfeit batteries and ink cartridges. Under threat of criminal proceedings, the sellers were forced to stop distributing the products, send out letters about the counterfeits to all buyers, and pay monetary damages to Canon. If the agreed-upon damages aren't paid on time, they triple. One seller in Canada hasn't paid and could lose his house.
The Canon executive explains that tracking counterfeit sellers is getting more difficult because distribution is shifting away from resale-which requires large shipments of contraband into the U.S. past increasingly vigilant inspectors-and toward the "drop-ship" method: When a buyer places an order online, the seller forwards it to a distributor in China, for instance, who ships the battery or cartridge directly to the buyer.
This may explain the dip last year in seizures of ink cartridges by Customs. "It's difficult to pursue the seller in the U.S., because he'll say he didn't know they were fake," the exec says. "And it's very difficult to identify the seller in China."
Air of legitimacy
Sales of fake photo goods aren't confined to the internet; there are numerous reports of people claiming to have done everything right, who purchased an ink cartridge or battery at a big chain store, and found it to be fake.
"This is how they end up in the major chains," says attorney deKieffer, whose firm keeps a comprehensive database on counterfeiting and represents about 50 consumer product companies in trademark protection cases: "Warehouse chains, which offer very low prices, take a lot of stuff that appears to be diverted from the gray market, and sometimes gray market stuff is fake."
Gray markets are channels where authentic goods are sold in unauthorized ways-usually when products intended for sale outside the U.S. are distributed within its borders at a lower price. Reputable retailers clearly label this merchandise as "gray" and explain that the manufacturer's warranty may not be valid in the U.S. (Often, the retailer will provide a store warranty instead.)
Although legitimate gray goods are just as reliable as their authorized counterparts, sometimes the gray market shades toward black. According to deKieffer, many illegitimate memory cards work almost as well as the authentic ones as a result of what the experts call "the midnight run." This is when the factory foreman runs a third shift on the same machines used to produce legitimate cards, but sends that load out the back door into his truck-and onto the gray market.
The midnight run is also a source of "overclocking," in which an original product is packaged to look like a better model, such as a 2GB memory card packaged as a 3GB.
Are counterfeit cameras next on the horizon? Mark Menz says yes. A computer forensic specialist who teaches investigative techniques to law enforcement agencies and is an instructor in the University of New Haven's Forensic Computer Investigation Program, he used to work for Kroll, the global intelligence and financial services giant, investigating high-tech knockoffs in Australia, China, and Russia.
"A year ago I was at the Orange County [California] swap meet, and a vendor had a number of cameras. He had a display just like Costco's, with regular point-and-shoot digital cameras and some cheap, cheap ones. I bought a little camera that looks like a stick for $5," Menz says. "He had a couple models of high-end cameras-Canon DSLRs. The tip-off was that some of them had Canon boxes, and some were in white boxes. One that caught my eye was a high-end Canon DSLR for $580. He had seven of them. A friend of mine had bought a legitimate one of the same model for over $1,000."
Menz reported the vendor to the Orange County Sheriff's office. Out of curiosity, I checked out a different swap meet, near Newport Beach, CA, in April. Amid the used power tools and stacks of cheap apparel, it was easy to find what looked like a brand-new Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W90 in its original box. A couple of guys had set up an awning beside their van, and laid out a jumble of new DVD players, stereo speakers, and miscellaneous consumer electronics, new and used.
One of them opened the camera box, which on closer inspection seemed as if it had been opened before. But all the paperwork seemed to be in order, the packaging was pristine, and the ultra-thin chrome camera itself looked like it had never been out of its plastic wrapper. Price for this gem: $220.
It looked real because it was-a real DSC-W80, not a W90. On the front of the camera it said 7.2 megapixels. The W90 has 8.1MP. So while $220 would have been a great price for a W90, it's not much less than the street price of a legit W80. This lesser model had been given a box upgrade.
The seller shrugged when we moved on. He knew that somebody else would snap it up.
Print
Stumble It 
Comments
Be the first to comment!