Some of the counterfeit Azvudine tablets were seized at the scene.
The procurator sent the law into the enterprise to explain the relevant laws and regulations on the protection of intellectual property rights to the enterprise personnel.
At 2 o'clock in the morning on January 11, 2023, there were no vehicles and pedestrians on a deserted street in Pingdingshan, Henan, only a few street lights were on, and there were two figures in the shadow on the side of the road. To Liu's surprise, the "in-demand medicine" bought for more than 200,000 yuan turned out to be a fake drug passed off as vitamin tablets.
How counterfeit drugs are made
Azvudine is produced by a biotechnology company in Henan, located in Pingdingshan City, when it was first listed, a bottle of medicine was privately resold from 350 yuan to 550 yuan, and it was still difficult to find a drug. "As long as there is medicine, the price is high. "Knowing that Wu is from Pingdingshan, many friends from other places asked him if he could buy it on his behalf. Wu suffered from having no channels to buy drugs, so he came up with the idea of making counterfeits and selling them.
"Since you want to make and sell fakes, you have to confuse the real with the fake. "At the beginning of January 2023, Wu and his friends Ning and Wang purchased a bottle of Azvudine tablets, and after analyzing and studying the drug bottles, tablets, instructions, packaging boxes, etc., they ordered a hot-melt coding machine and nearly 10,000 medicine bottles from the Internet, and inquired around to find printing black dens, and ordered thousands of sets of drug instructions and paper packaging boxes.
"We first purchased over-the-counter drugs such as multivitamins from pharmacies, and after comparing them, we found that vitamin tablets, sodium bicarbonate tablets and Azvudine tablets were very similar, and we planned to use them as stand-ins. In order to make the raw materials sufficient, Ning and Wang respectively purchased nearly 130,000 vitamin tablets and sodium bicarbonate tablets from dozens of pharmacies and pharmacies in the city.
Put the medicine into the bottle, apply the label, and print the production date with a portable inkjet gun...... The counterfeit Azvudine tablets were made. After the counterfeiting was completed, Wu and others carried out covert publicity through the circle of friends - only accepting "big buyers" and not retailing. Soon, business came, in order to make the purchaser believe that he was selling real medicine, Wu deliberately chose the transaction location near the drug manufacturer, so that the purchaser had the illusion that the medicine was taken directly from the manufacturer.
From January 7 to February 4, 2023, Wu and others made a total of more than 2,700 boxes of counterfeit Azvudine tablets, with an amount of more than 749,000 yuan.
Once the case was discovered, he was imprisoned
Liu, the drug purchaser, resold the "Azvudine Tablets" purchased from Wu to Qiao. "The production date and expiration date on the pill box are inconsistent with the information scanned on the traceability code, and the date on the pill box is also inconsistent with the date on the pill bottle. The production batch number, production date, and expiration date on the medicine box of the regular pharmaceutical factory are all stamped, and these are all printed, and the position of the seal is crooked, and there is no production batch number. Qiao found that the packaging, specifications and models of the drug were very different from the genuine product, and judged that he had bought a fake drug, so he hurriedly called the police and took the initiative to hand over 581 bottles of fake Azvudine tablets he bought.
On February 4, 2023, Wu and three others were arrested on suspicion of producing and selling counterfeit drugs. At the request of the public security organs, the Zhanhe District Procuratorate of Pingdingshan City intervened in advance to guide the investigation in accordance with the law, put forward investigation opinions on the identification of drugs, the characterization of the case, and the determination of the amount of the crime, and at the same time suggested that the public security organs dig deep into the upstream and downstream related personnel, and then successfully prosecuted 4 upstream personnel who provided fake packaging materials.
After inspection, the finished product inspection report issued by a biotechnology company in Henan Province proved that the seized Azvudine tablets were counterfeit drugs; the inspection report issued by the Pingdingshan Food and Drug Inspection Institute showed that the seized Azvudine tablets passed the composition test and no Azvudine ingredients were detected. The Pingdingshan Municipal Administration for Market Regulation determined that the drugs involved in the case were counterfeit.
In the review and prosecution stage, the procuratorate found that Wu and others fraudulently used the registered trademark of a biotechnology company in Henan without the permission of the right holder, and their behavior constituted the crime of producing and selling counterfeit drugs and the crime of counterfeiting registered trademarks at the same time, and should be punished with one heavier punishment, the sales amount of the case was 749,000 yuan, and the statutory penalty for the crime of producing and selling counterfeit drugs was heavier, and it was finally determined that the behavior of Wu and others constituted the crime of producing and selling counterfeit drugs.
On May 17, 2023, the Zhanhe District Procuratorate prosecuted Wu, Ning, and Wang on suspicion of producing and selling counterfeit drugs, and filed a civil public interest lawsuit attached to the criminal case. On July 30, the Zhanhe District People's Court sentenced defendant Wu to 11 years imprisonment and a fine of 1.15 million yuan, sentenced defendant Ning to 10 years imprisonment and a fine of 350,000 yuan, sentenced defendant Wang to four years imprisonment and fined 20,000 yuan, and sentenced defendants Wu and Ning to pay punitive damages.
After the first-instance verdict was announced, the procuratorate raised a prosecutorial counter-appeal on the grounds that some of the defendants had been sentenced unusually lightly. On September 25, 2023, the Pingdingshan Intermediate People's Court made a second-instance judgment, adopted the protest opinion, and changed the sentence to six years imprisonment for the defendant Wang in the original trial, with the same fine. In March this year, the case was selected as a typical case of the procuratorate punishing the crime of manufacturing and selling counterfeit and shoddy goods in accordance with the law.
Litigation source governance to protect people's livelihood
In order to do a good job in the "second half of the article" of case handling, the procuratorial organs not only "grasp the end and treat the disease", crack down on the crime of counterfeit and shoddy goods in the whole chain, but also "grasp the front end and treat the disease before it happens" to protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers and enterprises. On several occasions, the procuratorate took the initiative to contact the infringed enterprise, sent a series of specially produced drug safety comic manuals to the enterprise, and suggested that it take effective measures to prevent and stop the occurrence of crime in a timely manner.
"As a special commodity, drugs are related to the life and health of the people. While cracking down on crime, we should also pay attention to the protection of intellectual property rights, further promote the special action of 'procuratorial protection of enterprises' and the special supervision of judicial protection of the private economy, and enhance the awareness of enterprise risk prevention. On April 7, Wang Linhai, chief prosecutor of the Pingdingshan Municipal Procuratorate, came to a biotechnology company in Henan, an infringed company, to analyze the legal risks faced by the enterprise in combination with the case, help the enterprise find loopholes and weak links in the system, improve the legal risk early warning and prevention mechanism, create "order-based" legal services for the enterprise, and strengthen the awareness of intellectual property protection of the enterprise. This is the first stop of the Pingdingshan City Procuratorate's "100 Procurators into 100 Enterprises" series of activities.
In the activity of "100 procurators sending the law into enterprises", the procuratorates at the two levels made PPT courseware and intellectual property protection manuals for the cases handled, and created order-based legal services for enterprises in the form of warning education of typical cases and rule of law courses, so as to strengthen the awareness of intellectual property protection of enterprises and stimulate innovation and creativity. At the same time, the relevant laws and regulations and typical cases of intellectual property protection are made into a series of cartoons, and new media platforms are used to explain the law through cases and popularize the law online, actively guiding enterprise personnel to consciously abide by relevant laws and regulations, and creating a good atmosphere for the protection of intellectual property rights in the whole society.
(Source: Procuratorate Daily, Der Spiegel Author: Liu Lixin, Chen Yanpei, Li Haoming)