Sale of Fake Famous Brand Audio Equipment in Guangdong Brought to an end

By Sennheiser Electronic Gmbh Co. Kg, PRNE
Wednesday, March 30, 2011

WEDEMARK, Germany, March 31, 2011 - In September 2010, responding to reports by companies Harman,
Sennheiser, Shure and Audio-Technica (acting to uphold their rights),
Guangdong Public Security Department supervised a criminal investigation by
Jiangmen City Police into Enping City Meipai Electronic Audio Factory, which
was suspected of selling fake audio equipment under famous brand names. On
October 28, after meticulous investigation, Jiangmen City Police launched a
crackdown operation, raiding the above-mentioned large-scale fake goods den
and three other storage dens in one swoop. They broke up a fake goods gang of
considerable size and seized over 1200 items of audio equipment, including
microphones, loudspeakers, power amplifiers, and mixers, all marked falsely
with the above-mentioned trademarks. The money involved was over 3.5 million
RMB
, and the principal suspects were detained on the spot. It has been
established that the gang, operating under the name "New Dynamics Audio
Equipment Factory", used the internet as a platform to sell huge quantities
of fake audio equipment under famous brand names. By the time the case was
cracked, sales had already reached 1.8 million RMB. On December 5 2010, after
authorization by Enping City People's Procuratorate, Enping City Public
Security Bureau arrested four of the suspects.

This operation effectively curbed market circulation of fake low
quality goods, retrieved huge economic losses, and successfully upheld the
legal rights of the brand names involved.

"The active fight against brand and product piracy is extremely
important to us in order to enable us to protect the brand and our customers
and avoid the sale/purchase of counterfeit equipment. The purchase of
counterfeits can be avoided by buying through our network of authorised
Sennheiser retailers. This means we can ensure that our customers purchase
genuine Sennheiser products and that the quality of the product is
guaranteed. With this intensive crackdown in Enping, we have succeeded in a
very important mission designed to protect our intellectual property and
consequently, the company too," said Volker Bartels, Sennheiser's President
of Corporate Services, spokesperson of the Executive Management Board.

"Counterfeit products damage our entire industry," said Al
Hershner
, Vice President of Shure's US and Asia Business Units. "Shure cares
about the interests of our customers and we are committed to collaborating
with other professional audio manufacturers to take a united and strong
stance against counterfeits."

"We're very pleased to join forces with other partners across the
audio industry to take actions against those counterfeit manufacturers of
branded audio equipment. Unfortunately, counterfeiting is not a new issue in
the audio industry or indeed in any successful global enterprise. Because our
customers expect and deserve the highest level of satisfaction when
purchasing HARMAN audio products, we actively monitor the counterfeit market
and have processes in place to address this challenge. As part of our
commitment to the integrity and quality of HARMAN technology and products, we
have and continue to increase our resources to prevent potential damage to
our brands and to our customers as a result of counterfeiting. Because
counterfeiting is a criminal activity, we work with law enforcement agencies
worldwide whenever those agencies decide to take action against those who
would profit by this illegal conduct. We can't stress enough the importance
to HARMAN customers and channel partners of procuring equipment only from
HARMAN authorized channels. This is a serious issue that we are diligently
fighting every day to ensure our customers receive only genuine HARMAN audio
products."

"We are pleased at Audio-Technica of our collaboration with other
major brands the action against counterfeits manufacturers and traders. This
collaboration aims to safeguard the public buying genuine products. Our brand
image and our successes are due to quality product and warranty services from
our organization, action against product piracy is essential in order to
protect the customer experience who believe very often that he is using
genuine product. Visual appearance of the counterfeit products does not
guarantee neither the audio quality nor the long term use; when one day the
customer will realize that he/she does not have an original product, his/her
disappointment will be somehow associated to our brand ; this is not
acceptable for Audio-Technica." Commented by Ryuji Haraguchi, Director of
Audio-Technica Corporation, Japan/General Manager International Department.

The Sennheiser Group, with its headquarters in Wedemark near
Hanover, Germany, is one of the world's leading manufacturers of microphones,
headphones and wireless transmission systems. The family-owned company, which
was established in 1945, recorded sales of around EUR390 million in 2009.
Sennheiser employs more than 2,100 people worldwide, and has manufacturing
plants in Germany, Ireland and the USA. The company is represented worldwide
by subsidiaries in France, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany,
Denmark (Nordic), Russia, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, Japan, China, Canada,
Mexico and the USA, as well as by long-term trading partners in many other
countries. Also part of the Sennheiser Group are Georg Neumann GmbH, Berlin
(studio microphones and monitor loudspeakers), and the joint venture
Sennheiser Communications A/S (headsets for PCs, offices and call centres).

You can find all the latest information on Sennheiser by visiting
our website at www.sennheiser.com.

    Sennheiser electronic GmbH & Co. KG
    Edelgard Marquardt
    Corporate Public Relations Manager
    Ph. +49(5130)600-329
    Fax +49(5130) 600-295
    Mobil. +49(172)51-97-329
    Email: marquare@sennheiser.com

Sennheiser electronic GmbH & Co. KG: Edelgard Marquardt, Corporate Public Relations Manager, Ph. +49(5130)600-329, Fax +49(5130) 600-295, Mobil. +49(172)51-97-329, Email: marquare at sennheiser.com

YOUR VIEW POINT
NAME : (REQUIRED)
MAIL : (REQUIRED)
will not be displayed
WEBSITE : (OPTIONAL)
YOUR
COMMENT :