Counterfeiting ... or is it?

[unixronin]

New Scientist has an article about counterfeiting and anti-counterfeiting technology.  Not so much just counterfeiting money, as counterfeiting all kinds of products ranging from fake drugs(fake Lipitor anti-cholesterol drugs, fake cough syrups) through durable products (fake Michelin tires, fake Tyco fire sprinklers, fake Schneider circuit breakers) to fake consumer electronics (many NEC products, fake Duracell batteries).  I can't link to the article here, because you need a New Scientist subscription to access it.¹

What made the NEC case particularly interesting is that it didn't stop at selling cheap junk with NEC logos on it, or even cloned NEC products.  The cloners had a network of factories across China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and were manufacturing and selling over 50 NEC products and selling them worldwide.  Their reps carried NEC business cards and sold licenses to NEC technology for royalties.  Most interestingly, though, they had dome their own R&D, and were selling — under the NEC brand — a number of their own original products that NEC hadn't thought of yet.

New Scientist asks the question, "What do you call the counterfeiting of products that haven't officially been invented yet?"

I think this is an error of mis-classification.  I suggest that this is not simply an uncommonly sophisticated case of product counterfeiting, but rather the first (reported) case of corporate identity theft.

[1]  "Copycat Killer", New Scientist, April 21-27 2007, pp.28-32

Comments

[dafydd.livejournal.com]

"Fraud" is a good word. I like "fraud."