The enforcement actions in intellectual property rights are of immense value in ensuring that the rights holder derives maximum value from his IP. There are huge investments involved in R&D and in developing a protectible IP, whether it is a copyright, design or a trade mark. Accordingly, corporations take recourse to enforcement strategies to interdict counterfeit goods spread in the market causing them loss both in terms of money and reputation.

Our clients, the Japanese company Casio approached us to carry out enforcement actions against counterfeiting activity going on in respect of its calculators in the country. The IP Enforcement department of Lex Orbis formulated a plan of action to bust the piracy racket going on in various cities in the country with the help of local police personnel in the cities.

In the latest of enforcement actions, raids were conducted for fake calculators being sold in shops in Varanasi, to bolster arrest of shopkeepers as also derive further information about the suppliers’ network and bigger stakeholders in the racket. The operatives reached Varanasi and procured one sample from the suspected shop, which upon tests was found to be fake. To entice the seller, a further order for the amount of Rs. 22,000 was placed with them, upon paying Rs. 3000 as advance. On the day of the delivery, the police team accompanied by the SP City and Station In -charge, Chowk Police Station reached the venue and conducted raids on the shops of Fashion Watch House and Classic Gift Shop at Dalmandi area in Varanasi and recovered 70 fake calculators of three different models (60 Fx 82 MS, 4 Fx 100 MS and 6 Fx 991 MS) being sold freely. Though no recovery could be made from Classic Gift Shop, since the shopkeeper managed to remove the infringing goods upon commotion created by the neighbouring shops, an important find was that the owner of the two shops was the same. The police arrested the shopkeeper named Syed Zeeshan and recovered a further booty of 68 calculators from his house, which was revealed by him during interrogation.

A case bearing under section 63 of the Copyright Act, 1957 was registered against Syed Jeeshan. The new Station In-charge of the police station is hopeful of getting more leads from the accused and shall continue to raid other parties as well. An independent scientific comparison of seized fake calculators with the original Casio ones to be done at Government Forensic Laboratory in Lucknow or Hyderabad, was also suggested by the Station In-charge.

The enforcement action was successful and keeping in mind that Varanasi is a small city, the criminal enforcement actions sent ripples across in the market. It is important to intercept the distribution channels in case of pirated goods, since they are the main leads who disburse fake goods in different cities.



The newsclippings pertaining to the seizure are attached herewith:

Dainik Jagran (In Hindi)
Hindustan times (In English)