Morgan Hill-based Specialized Bicycles has seen a surge in counterfeit bike frames circulating the Internet. This problem with supposedly high-end framesets being sold under their brand name has gotten so prevalent that company believes that an international counterfeit factory must be producing near replicas of their products.
To the eye, the counterfeited framesets are near duplicates of Specialized’s bicycle frames, but their construction and composite is markedly different. Specialized began seeing an influx of the fake framesets last year, predominantly sold on websites like Craigslist and eBay. Though the high-end bike company has long been the target of counterfeiters, they say this is the largest and most aggressive operation they have seen.
The company, whose headquarters are located at 15130 Concord Circle in Morgan Hill, believes that a Chinese counterfeiting operation is ripping off their designs. This is because many of the people who unknowingly bought counterfeits said that their purchases were shipped from China and Taiwan.
Because of the shear volume of Internet sales and auctions, Specialized could not estimate the number of fake bikes that are being sold under their name. Specialized representatives reported that they see no stop to the problem in the near future, because the Chinese government has been less then helpful when dealing with these counterfeit issues.
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- on 07/19/2009
Actually - Specialized can implement a very simple solution, called " call-in numeric token", Since every bike frame has a unique serial number, Specialized can add an addition random ID - at time of purchase end user customers would be able to authenticate the validity of the random, ID number printed on the frame via a simple Web search query. More about this simple Point of sale method on http://www.software.co.il/wordpress/2008/06/threat-modeling-for-the-pharmaceutical-industry/
Danny Lieberman http://www.software.co.il/ Protecting data
- on 02/05/2009
It's really sad that unscrupulous men will flat out plagiarize a successful company's product.
