Counterfeits- The Truth of the matter

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Here is a video you should watch: [video]http://www.hulu.com/watch/390535[/video]

Also: http://www.cnbc.com/id/37824347

The counterfeit goods arena is vast and subversive. Everything from T-Shirts to the medicines we need, to the food we eat is counterfeited. It is a multi billion dollar scourge and blight on the face of the global economy. Here in the USA its is estimated to cost businesses and taxpayers $250 billion dollars a year in lost revenue and cost over 750,000 American jobs.
Sadly, as knife enthusiasts we are are not immune to the subject of counterfeiting goods. As many of you know the practice of counterfeit knives is quite vast and concerns not only the pricey high dollar models, but also the cheap knives that non knife enthusiasts buy. There are reasons for this. Greed by the makers of these products, but also it is a pretty insidious way of pulling the rug out from under an ecomony (local or global) that is already struggling.
In some cases as in with our food and our medicines this deceptive practice of counterfeiting has even cost lives in the form of tainted product or product that is actually not what it is purported to be.
In some cases counterfeit military products have found their way into the stock of our military supplies, thereby undermining the effectiveness of our weapons systems thru substandard replacement parts, but also thru the drugs our injured servicemen may get in their time of need.
In some cases, such as the Marlboro scandal, the links to the counterfeiting lead directly back to organized crime supporting global terrorism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfeit_consumer_goods


Anyone who thinks that supporting these criminals with your purchases is proper and OK is deluding themselves with greedy, selfish thinking. Branded knockoffs or Blatant marked counterfeits are one in the same. They are the acts of criminals engaging in the criminal enterprise of intellectual property theft and also copyright and patent infringement. By knowingly supporting these criminals with your purchases you are also engaging in this practice as an accomplice. By your selfishness and complacency you are fostering a criminal enterprise.

It becomes hard to see where this money goes after your purchases, but one supposed scenario is that the vast billions of these lost revenues are being used to legally purchase American properties and brands by offshore conglomerates, thereby further eroding the American economy and are now legally stripping our country of it's brand legacy and of it's heritages, not to mention billions in taxes that these foreign investors get away without having to pay.

Other links to this subject:
http://www.unodc.org/toc/en/crimes/counterfeit-goods.html
http://www.havocscope.com/counterfeit-goods-ranking/
http://www.theglobalipcenter.com/12...feit-and-pirated-goods-seized-are-from-china/

Anyone with knowledge or need to report these criminal and their practices should do so here:
http://www.stopfakes.gov/consumer-tools/report-fake-goods
http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx
https://apps.cbp.gov/eallegations/

NOTE: This is an Adult discussion. If you cannot post here in an adult manner perhaps you should refrain from posting.
Any argumentative, childish posts or trolling of the subject will be met with infractions.
 
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I try hard to avoid counterfeit products not only for the reasons you state, but because part of paying for a (reputable ) brand is the protection it affords me as a consumer. What real motivation do they have to tell me the truth about the materials they are using if they're already lying about the brand of knife they're selling?
 
counterfeiting as in selling using anothers brand and deceiving or trying to deceive the public and the said brand is alltoghether wrong.

Intellectual property is not the same issue, and it should not be put in the same bag with counterfeiting.

Even industrial patents are debatable, with solid arguments against.

I'm from a third world country, wich doesn't do any counterfeiting in a major scale...but we have fought against intellectual property and industrial patents. And many countries have.
Also, as you must know, internet is a very hot arena on the issue, with movements as copyleft, wikileaks, linux, etc, wich are against intellectual property rights...

So counterfeiting is always wrong. But it's profoundly debatable that intellectual property is always right. Not the same thing.
 
The intellectual property debate only works if you are not part of the equation .Let us say you draw up a design make a prototype, work out the bugs and the days after you have a perfect sample in hand the guy next door walks in with a copy he just purchased on the street for $15; you would be cool with that?
 
I worked in a field where design patents and IP were a huge deal.

We made PDC drill bits for the oil and natural gas drilling industry (amongst many other fields).

The company was fantastic to work for. Profit sharing (really great profit sharing!). Free medical (absolutely fantastic.....a pregnancy and delivery with a few issues cost my wife and I $10!). Free dental, free life insurance. The company paid for 68% of books and tuition for college and 50% of graduate education, regardless of field, or whether that education would take you away from their company. Pay was typically double minimum wage, even for the entry jobs. Regular raises, and department caps that were actually more than decent living wages. Retirement investment matching up to 16%!


My point?

Our competitor was constantly committing IP theft. They would steal ideas. Parts to reverse engineer, pay employees to leak innovations.

We would go to marketing meetings with clients, and they would say that they were hearing innovations being touted by this competitor often days after they were discovered by our R&D department. The company invested about 30% of revenue back into research. Innovation was the life blood of the industry.

This low down company would try and patten our inventions, and processes without paying out the money to come up with them. They treated employees terribly. Poor pay, poor benefits.



Every sale they would steal or sabotage (by climbing in our dumpster to steal scrap parts to copy and reverse engineer), meant lost market share, and lost employment opportunities for people like me. They paid out less for employees, benefits, R&D and were stealing designs and innovations they did not pay out research money for. Allowing them to undercut better companies (by "better" I mean moral, generous, caring, benevolent owners! How many modern companies can you say that about?).

I have seen and felt the effect of theft of designs/IP theft. They weren't making terrible, shoddy parts. They were making quality parts, with stolen designs, and innovation.






A copy or counterfeit may be high quality, or more commonly, low quality.

I could pay a very low amount for a decently constructed knife, with decent steel, heat treated properly. A real functional, lovely knife. But if it is a copy, or a stolen design, the quality and low price are immaterial.

It hurts some one, somewhere. Big or small effects.


If if is really shoddy, or made with terrible dangerous chemicals, or materials, it might hurt you too.




I once purchased counterfeit toothpaste (in a third world country). I paid actual cost! The package looked just like my brand favorite. I have no idea what horrible things were in it, but it instantly caused tooth issues! Sensitivity, and "weirdness". Only after using it, did I look closer at the label. Typo's in the small print on the label were an instant giveaway!
 
Not entirely knife related, (though knives are featured on it occasionally,) but I came across this website recently, and thought some of you might be interested in it.
http://thecounterfeitreport.com/

Bigfattyt said:
I once purchased counterfeit toothpaste (in a third world country). I paid actual cost! The package looked just like my brand favorite. I have no idea what horrible things were in it, but it instantly caused tooth issues! Sensitivity, and "weirdness". Only after using it, did I look closer at the label. Typo's in the small print on the label were an instant giveaway!
Click to expand...

Was it Colgate?
http://thecounterfeitreport.com/product/116/
 
I think that the 2nd responder is absolutely correct, this is a hot issue and the thread may get nasty soon.

The reason that it is so hot and we as Americans get offended at IP rights is that we are a capitalist based country by nature and right now IP is the only thing that we have going for us in the world economy.

Without patents and designs we have nothing. We are the innovators, not the producers.

We design it, China produces it..

When the Chinense get a hold of our design and begin producing themselves, we have absolutely no pull at all in the global economy.

IP is what we rely on, it's all we have.
 
aguijonmagico said:
counterfeiting as in selling using anothers brand and deceiving or trying to deceive the public and the said brand is alltoghether wrong.

Intellectual property is not the same issue, and it should not be put in the same bag with counterfeiting.

Even industrial patents are debatable, with solid arguments against.

I'm from a third world country, wich doesn't do any counterfeiting in a major scale...but we have fought against intellectual property and industrial patents. And many countries have.
Also, as you must know, internet is a very hot arena on the issue, with movements as copyleft, wikileaks, linux, etc, wich are against intellectual property rights...

So counterfeiting is always wrong. But it's profoundly debatable that intellectual property is always right. Not the same thing.
Click to expand...

stvpourciau said:
I think that the 2nd responder is absolutely correct, this is a hot issue and the thread may get nasty soon.

The reason that it is so hot and we as Americans get offended at IP rights is that we are a capitalist based country by nature and right now IP is the only thing that we have going for us in the world economy.

Without patents and designs we have nothing. We are the innovators, not the producers.

We design it, China produces it..

When the Chinense get a hold of our design and begin producing themselves, we have absolutely no pull at all in the global economy.

IP is what we rely on, it's all we have.
Click to expand...

Even with taking the intellectual property issue off the table, there is still the little problem of theft from those with the "legal" rights to produce the patented or copyrighted materials/items.
The problem is that while these third world countries are producing the actual product, they are also making substandard product of inferior materials and wholesaling them at vastly discounted pricing from the real thing. Doing so undermines the actual product and company. They do this knowing full well that should any of their substandard counterfeit product fail that it will be the actual manufacturer that is blamed by the consumer. Should any of their substandard counterfeit product fail causing injuries or death there will be no repercussions to them, it will again be faulted to the actual manufacturer potentially costing that company hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal resources. They do this also knowing full well it will cost any manufacturers hundreds of thousands of dollars just to pursue litigations to stop them from illegally producing.
They reap almost all the benefits of sales of an item they had no hand in designing, engineering, producing or marketing with none of the legal downside of such, such as safety testing, warranty...etc.. It is a grand get-rich-quick scheme that is undermining businesses and economies globally.

The best thing we can do is encourage international recognition of copyrights patents and yes...intellectual properties.
There needs to be much sterner penalties for acts of counterfeiting and piracy.

The funny thing is that sooner or later these chickens will come home to roost for these counterfeiters and countries that allow them to continue their criminal enterprise. At some point these manufacturers will realize that it is better and likely less costly in the long run to wholly produce them in your own country where legalities can be controlled and they will pull their manufacturing rights out of these third world counties and leave them with vast manufacturing infrastructure with nothing but counterfeits to produce. Hopefully then they will become the pariah they should be seen as now and will regret their actions. It will likely be too late then, as the stigma of theft can last a very long time.

The net cost of all this is that we, in the end as consumers, will end up paying for it in the form of having the real products (the good ones made of what theyre supposed to be made of) being made even more costly to cover the expense of these shenanigans or will end up costing a bit more because the manufacturer will produce them in their own country ( or a place that enforces property laws) instead of in a country where property rights are not controlled properly.
 
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thebrain said:
The intellectual property debate only works if you are not part of the equation .Let us say you draw up a design make a prototype, work out the bugs and the days after you have a perfect sample in hand the guy next door walks in with a copy he just purchased on the street for $15; you would be cool with that?
Click to expand...

Absolutely - you stole the words from my heart. And add to that - your company is out of business and your family starving, because someone stole your design and offered copies for $15, and you could never recover your investment... Totally uncool!
 
This is exactly why I am so disgusted with YouTube Videos where the person says how great a counterfeit product is while saying they don't "support" counterfeiting. Pisses me off to no end!!!!!
 
aguijonmagico said:
counterfeiting as in selling using anothers brand and deceiving or trying to deceive the public and the said brand is alltoghether wrong.

Intellectual property is not the same issue, and it should not be put in the same bag with counterfeiting.

Even industrial patents are debatable, with solid arguments against.

I'm from a third world country, wich doesn't do any counterfeiting in a major scale...but we have fought against intellectual property and industrial patents. And many countries have.
Also, as you must know, internet is a very hot arena on the issue, with movements as copyleft, wikileaks, linux, etc, wich are against intellectual property rights...

So counterfeiting is always wrong. But it's profoundly debatable that intellectual property is always right. Not the same thing.
Click to expand...

IMHO, IP is as valid and applicable as are counterfeit goods. In both cases, the criminal steals something to make a cheap something, thereby hurting the original designer. And the copyleft camp also has a day job with a copyright company (well 95% of them), because they know the copyleft does not feed their family. And now that we are at it, did you know the Freedom that GPL (GNU Public License) talks about is not actually freedom? They "force" you to release the source code which is not exactly in tune with the dictionary definition of freedom, is it? Forcing someone to release source code against their will is wrong, and not freedom. And also did you notice the GPL camp seems to have a single enemy when there are scores of software firms that do closed source software. Having an agenda against a single organization primarily for decade smells fishy...

Countries against IP rights probably don't have any (software) IP to begin with, and have relied on American software firms to provide for them, won't be an exaggerated statement (no, I am not trying to insult you or your country, and I also come from a third world where the copyleft movement is strong). And copyleftists have found a hold in such countries, no surprise here.

IP is applicable everywhere - if I spend countless hours designing a perfect folder, it is my IP. If I spend countless hours designing and writing software that solves real world problems, it is my IP. Expecting me to release my IP for free (or force me to) is not only foolish, it borders on being criminal.

I don't do counterfeits (not that I am not guilty - I was naive and foolish at one time). I don't do GPL software. If there is a need to purchase a $20 folder, I'll look at Byrd series from Spyderco, than opt for a SanRenMu (popularly known as SRM)...
 
The thing I find incomprehensible is those who knowingly buy a counterfeit of an expensive item such as a Rolex. How can they get any pride of ownership knowing that what they have is a fake? Also how can they brag to their friends about their purchase knowing that they are lying?! I totally cannot understand the mindset of such folks. They are living a lie!

I unknowingly bought a counterfeit pair of Sony headphones from a Amazon seller who was offering them used. Suspecting they were fake I used the Internet to determine that they were and contacted the seller. I got a full refund and used it to buy the genuine article. The fakes were not even marked as made in the correct country to be genuine Sony!

Per my understanding many counterfeit items are actually unsafe. Examples are "aircraft grade" fasteners which are grossly under strength due to faked material and heat treatment certifications or auto parts which are disasters waiting to happen such as counterfeit brake pads that will not properly emergency stop a car.

Personally I would like to see U.S. Customs personnell increased to the point where they could actually inspect, and if necessary seize, the contents of every container of products being imported. If the container is full of "Sony" items and is not being imported by Sony then it gets seized and destroyed. This would also take care of the "grey market" illegal imports of items not authorized by the USA legal distributor of the brand. Also have the justice department prosecute the importers of the seized material. If it does not pay then counterfeiting and grey market importing will not be done.
 
One thing I've never understood about people who buy counterfeits, especially Hinderer counterfeits, is that they often cite their reason as that real Hinderers are too expensive. To me, that's a load of bollocks. If you want a cheap Hinderer, buy a Cryo. Hell, there's even a Cryo2 and the Thermite in the works that are all designed by Hinderer. So you're getting the Hinderer design and supporting an American company instead of some no-name Chinese knockoffs. Even Strider had a collaboration with Buck so you can get a cheap real Strider as well. So at least to me, the too expensive argument is rubbish.
 
Maprik said:
This is exactly why I am so disgusted with YouTube Videos where the person says how great a counterfeit product is while saying they don't "support" counterfeiting. Pisses me off to no end!!!!!
Click to expand...

As always, consider the source before believing anything.
 
"Branded knockoffs or Blatant marked counterfeits are one in the same."
No it isn't the same at all.
Some American companies are copying knife designs as well, so according to you they are all criminals.

"intellectual property theft and also copyright and patent infringement."
Fairly vague story since some of these are restricted to one or more countries only.
 
the kid said:
"Branded knockoffs or Blatant marked counterfeits are one in the same."
No it isn't the same at all.
Some American companies are copying knife designs as well, so according to you they are all criminals.
Click to expand...

Yes they are, or at a minimum very unethical. It is one thing to copy a design point and another to wholly steal a design verbatim whether or not the actual logo is also stolen. There has been many discussions on this subject on this forum/site.

the kid said:
"
"intellectual property theft and also copyright and patent infringement."
Fairly vague story since some of these are restricted to one or more countries only.
Click to expand...

Exactly why I stated that Copyrights, patents and IP, should be internationally recognized in all courts of law.
The reason these unethical or criminal entities get away with what they do is because they operate in legal grey areas or operate in countries where prosecution is difficult. If international recognition of properties was enacted, they would soon lose interest in their easy pickings of other companies hard work when their ill gotten gain is having to be spent in litigation/restitution for their dishonesty instead of going into their pockets or being used to victimize another companies rightful efforts.
 
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