What should I do if I used to spend a lot of money on luxury bags, but now the style is outdated, worn and aged, and I can't carry it out? When you look at the "popular fried chicken", you are heartbroken but shy, if someone says that it can help you "change" the old model into a new one, and the price is only 1/5 of the new one, will you be tempted? Recently, the Shanghai Changning District Procuratorate handled a case of counterfeiting a registered trademark for the restructuring of luxury bags.
Diagram of the old bag to the new model.
"Let's take a look, a bag like this big can be directly changed into two new bags! If you have the same old bag at home and like the new one, you can go directly to our No. 6 link at a fixed price of 2080! This "old to new" business is the "popularity king" of Yan's company's live broadcast room. Every "explosive change" live broadcast can attract a large number of fans to watch and place orders passionately.
With such a huge price difference, can it really turn the old bag into a new product of the season? How is this operating model achieved?
In April 2021, Yan and others established a partnership to engage in the washing and repair of high-end leather goods, and the buying and selling of second-hand high-end leather goods. The company has been established for more than a month, and the considerable income has given Yan the ambition to further expand his business. He heard about the luxury facelift business from a friend and thought it would attract new customers and boost the brand's influence. So he saw the business opportunity, and decisively increased this business - let customers provide customers with authentic luxury brand old leather bags, by dismantling the leather bags, cutting the original leather, adding counterfeit hardware, etc., to transform it into new models on sale, and charge 2,000-4,000 yuan according to the difficulty of restructuring.
Screenshot of Yan's company's homepage account.
In order to attract customers, Yan used his brains in "drainage". Online, he hires special employees to be responsible for shooting, copywriting, and publishing short videos and live broadcasts on a video platform; Offline, he has opened a number of stores in Shanghai, in addition to providing bag modification services, but also operating high-end bags, leather goods, shoes and other professional cleaning and repair businesses. After the customer proposes the intention to change the package, the customer service will recommend the changed style and confirm the price with the customer. After that, the company will send someone to pick up the bag from the store, and the designer will make patterns according to the official website pattern or popular styles on the market, and then start to restructure.
Different from the general luxury goods counterfeiting, this new type of recontracting business is mainly made of genuine materials. However, for accessories such as lining fabrics, cowhide, zippers and buttons, if the accessories of the genuine bag are not enough, the company will purchase counterfeit hardware and linings with the brand logo and add them to the modified bag. In just two years, the company's business amount of illegally manufacturing and selling counterfeit luxury brand leather bags has reached more than 1.5 million yuan.
On December 7, 2022, criminal suspects Yan, Zhang Mou, Hu, Huang, and Shan were arrested by the police. After the case was transferred to the procuratorate, the prosecutor in charge of the case found that the dismantling and alteration of the A package type into the B package type on sale belonged to the above-mentioned situation of using the trademark of another person without the permission of the brand right holder after changing the original product form, which invisibly squeezed the potential market share of the brand B type bag, and should be found to be an infringement of the trademark right of the brand right holder, even if the purchased counterfeit hardware accessories with labels were not added, it should also be determined to be an infringement of the registered trademark of others.
After examination, the court held that the defendant Yan and others used the same trademark as their registered trademark on the same kind of goods without the permission of the owner of the registered trademark, and the circumstances were particularly serious, and their acts had violated the provisions of Article 213 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, and they should be investigated for criminal responsibility for the crime of counterfeiting registered trademarks.
Recently, after the court initiated a public prosecution, the main culprit Yan was sentenced by the court to three years in prison, suspended for three years, and fined 300,000 yuan, and the rest of the relevant personnel were convicted by the court. At the same time, the court also cooperated with the district court to carry out corporate compliance with the companies involved in the case, escorted the healthy development of small and micro enterprises through compliance reform, and optimized the business environment.
The prosecutor reminded
As long as the form of the goods changes and the trademark registered by the brand is used, it may be suspected of trademark infringement. For example, if Yan's company dismantles and changes the A bag into a B bag for the purpose of making profits, and the B section is the same model sold at the counter, even if the purchased counterfeit hardware accessories with labels are not used, it should be determined to infringe the registered trademark of others. However, "patching" behaviors that do not change the form of the goods, such as skin patching and zippering, do not constitute infringement. In addition, there are other situations, such as consumers who change their contracts for their own use in order to entertain themselves, which do not involve infringement. However, if some stores change the leather of the bag to pendants, bracelets, etc., and these pendants and bracelets are sold at the counter, it is also involved in infringement.
Author: Xu Qingzi, Wang Shiya, Qian Yuwen
Source: Procuratorate Daily Justice Network