D-Link takes fakes seriously

D-Link India has initiated serious steps to put an end to counterfeit its products in the market. It all started six months ago when some dealers alerted D-Link about the flourishing fakes at Nehru Place. "We suspected this information to be true and wanted somebody to confirm this before we took some action and hence we appointed Enforcers of Intellectual Property
(EIPR), headquartered in Mumbai to investigate," said a D-Link spokesperson.

Investigation confirmed that certain miscreants were cheating the customer by marketing fake and duplicate networking products like switches and modems in the name of D-Link. Based on investigations and information provided by
EIPR, police attached to the District Investigations Unit, (South) New Delhi, conducted a raid on behalf of D-Link in Nehru Place. The team raided Shift Info Byte a retailer in Deepak Building, Nehru Place, New Delhi.

A dozen spurious Ethernet switches labeled D-Link were found. Police arrested the owner of the
shop-Sahil Gupta (aged 27 years), for copyrights violation. The manufacturing source of these products is yet to be ascertained. 

According to D-Link, the seized products have very patch and poor designs on the PCB, which indicates that the product could have been locally assembled. However, the company has not ruled out the possibility of it being imported from countries like China.

D-Link's 16-port and 24-port Ethernet Switches (model DES 1016D and DES 1024D) are a robust model and is very widely used. The counterfeit goods of inferior quality were being sold as original D-Link products. The material seized from the shop is valued at Rs 85,000. "This is just the tip of iceberg. There could be many more involved in this whole business," he added.

The raid was conducted on 31st August, 2005. A case has been registered under FIR# 889 dated 31/08/05 in Kalkaji police station. The accused has been booked under section 63 of the copyrights act 1957. Sub Inspector Ashok Kumar, DIU (South Dist New Delhi) led the raid team and is the investigating officer of this case. The raid was conducted under the supervision of ACP Rajendra Kumar (In-charge
DIU, South Dist).

While D-Link awaits further reports from the investigations, it has initiated a customer awareness campaign about the identical fakes in the market. D-Link is alerting customer about the presence of duplicate networking products like switches, modems, routers, interface cards and other networking devices using the 'D-Link' trademark. To identify genuine D-Link product, it is asking customers to look for the unique D-Link India Ltd MRP sticker and the D-Link Factory Seal. 

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MUMBAI