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."

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.

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 [wikipedia.org] 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: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.

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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...