Soon, smart phone to help detect counterfeit goods
What about a smartphone-readable device that can help authenticate currency, electronic parts and luxury goods to minimise counterfeit? Chemical engineers from Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT) have invented a new type of tiny, smartphone-readable particle that is invisible to the naked eye, contain colored stripes of nanocrystals that glow brightly when lit up with near-infrared light. “These particles can easily be manufactured and integrated into a variety of materials and can withstand extreme temperatures, sun exposure and heavy wear,” explained Patrick Doyle, a chemical engineering professor at MIT. They could also be equipped with sensors that can “record” their environments. To manufacture the particles, the researchers used stop-flow lithography, a technique developed previously by Doyle. Many strategies have been developed to try to label legitimate products and prevent illegal trade – but these tags are often too easy to fake, the researchers found. Using this procedure, the researchers can generate vast quantities of unique tags.
http://www.siasat.com/english/news/soon-smart-phone-help-detect-counterfeit-goods
Lear MoreCustoms seeks data server of passenger info to check smuggling
Mumbai: The spurt in gold and drugs smuggling cases has prompted Mumbai Airport Customs to seek a separate data server of air passengers’ detailed information available with immigration authorities, and three more sniffer dogs to clamp down on smugglers at the international airport. Immigration authorities currently have the data server which stores the details of every air passenger flying in and out of the country. This information is required for the purposes of ensuring aviation safety and security. However, the Customs currently does not have a separate data server with air passenger information.
“If we have such data server on air passengers, we can go for data analysis, storage, archiving, and other tasks to hunt down suspects from lakhs of passengers. So we sought the higher authorities to provide us such date server,” a Customs official told PTI.
Lear MoreFight Against Online Sale of Fakes Goes on for Alibaba Group
In an ongoing battle against the online sale of counterfeit merchandise, Alibaba Group, China’s largest operator of Web shopping platforms, removed an estimated 114 million listings for suspected fake goods from the company’s giant Taobao Marketplace during the first ten months of 2013. The listing take-downs, which increased by 31 percent compared with the number of take-downs in the full year of 2012, are part of a comprehensive effort by Alibaba Group to curb intellectual property rights (IPR) infringement on its Taobao Marketplace, Alibaba.com, AliExpress, and Tmall.com e-commerce websites, according to company officials. Alibaba’s online marketplaces host millions of independent vendors. Policing the sites for counterfeit goods is an ongoing challenge, but one that must be met to protect the rights of consumers and brand owners, Alibaba executives have said. At a press conference last year announcing an with Chinese government and law enforcement agencies, Alibaba Group Executive Chairman Jack Ma called China’s highly organized counterfeiting industry a “cancer in society.” Alibaba recently issued a statement on its position on piracy: “Alibaba Group is highly committed to the protection of intellectual property rights and the fight against counterfeiting. The company works with brands, associations, government agencies and other stakeholders to create visible and significant results in the intellectual property enforcement space.”
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France seizes falsified drugs labelled as Chinese tea
Customs signCustoms officers in France have confiscated millions of fake aspirin, erectile dysfunction and diarrhoea drugs from China in what they claim is the largest recorded seizure of falsified medicines in the EU. Around 2.4m knock-off pharmaceutical products – concealed in two containers marked as containing Chinese tea – were seized at the port of Le Havre in France on February 27.
The haul included 601 boxes of medicines, including fake versions of Pfizer’s Viagra (sildenafil) and Eli Lilly’s Cialis (tadalafil), and was twice the size of the previous biggest seizure (once again in Le Havre) which netted 1.2m fake aspirin products in May 2013.
Lear MoreCity cracking down on illegal tobacco sales
A new tobacco retailers licensing program will add some teeth to existing state requirements and provide the City of Morgan Hill with more funds to conduct decoy operations to nab vendors who might sell cigarettes or other tobacco products to children, city staff said.
The council unanimously approved the first reading of an ordinance on the advice of the Morgan Hill Police Department. Capt. Jerry Neumayer said just before the council’s decision that the program would advance the council’s goals of “supporting youth and enhancing public safety priorities.”
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150 tobacco packs meant for illegal sale seized
(MENAFN – Muscat Daily) The Department of Inquiries and Criminal Investigations at the Seeb police station has arrested an Asian national for possessing a large quantity of smoking tobacco for sale illegally. An official said that the police station received a tip-off that a man was illegally selling various tobacco products in the Seeb market. ”The man was put under surveillance and arrested when he was driving away to sell the products. More than 150 packets of tobacco were recovered from him.
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Man faces 20 years in prison in counterfeit computer chip scheme
MILWAUKEE (WITI) — Thinking about buying any parts for your computer? FOX6′s Contact 6 says beware — those parts could be fake! “He would purchase the chips for about $2.00 a piece in China and sell them in the U.S. for several hundred dollars,” U.S. Postal Inspector Alex Sylvester said.
Ronald Graban, the mastermind in this scheme, realized he could make a very healthy profit. “He had inside information on exact serial numbers that Cisco and Nortel use. So, when he requested labels from China, they would put those exact numbers on there to try and hide they were counterfeit chips,” Sylvester said. Graban would then sell them to a third-party retailer. “It was reported to be a refurbished Cisco and Nortel product but in fact it wasn`t. It was a counterfeit product from China,” Sylvester said.
http://fox6now.com/2014/04/06/man-faces-20-years-in-prison-in-counterfeit-computer-chip-scheme/
Lear MoreTobacco smuggling Gibraltar border row
The difference in the price of tobacco is fuelling an illegal trade of smuggling from Gibraltar to Spain that appears to be increasing rapidly. Spanish police have attempted to crack down on the smugglers, leading to long traffic jams on the border and rising tensions between the two nations.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26880182
Lear MoreTobacco manufacturers told, internal law won’t stop Bill C-10 By Donna Duric, Writer
Six Nations Band Council has no concrete plan to fight the impending Bill C-10. With Elected Chief Ava Hill at the helm of a community meeting on the impending Tackling Contraband Tobacco Act (Bill C-10) last week, she called on the community to help them come up with strategies to fight the bill as it continues to wind its way through parliament. The bill aims to amend the Criminal Code to make trafficking in “contraband” tobacco an offence punishable by a maximum of five years in prison. It has already passed second reading in the House of Commons. About 60 community members, including local tobacco manufacturers, attended the meeting at Polytech last Wednesday night. But before the public meeting got underway, moderator Sandy Porter asked the audience if they wanted the media (The Turtle Island News was the only media present) to leave before the strategy session got under way. No one in the audience agreed with the suggestion. Elected Chief Hill explained parliamentary processes, saying she expects the bill to pass through the Senate and become law before parliament breaks for the summer recess in late June.
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Illegally imported tobacco impounded
HCM CITY (VNS)— Over 15,800 packets of smuggled tobacco were seized on Tuesday in an operation by the HCM City Market Watch Department to prevent smuggled tobacco from being traded in the city. The city’s operation is part of an ongoing nationwide campaign against tobacco smugglers held between April 1 and June 30, which was launched by the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s Market Surveillance Agency on Tuesday. The move follows the Government’s directives on fighting cigarette smuggling to protect the domestic producers and local employees, and to ensure revenue for the State budget and social security. Typically, the Market Watch Team 3B, which checked tobacco trading in District 3′ s Ward 8, confiscated more than 1,800 packets of smuggled tobacco, whereas the Tan Phu Market Watch Team, which checked the trading in Tan Phu District’s Tay Thanh Ward, seized more than 6,000 packets of smuggled tobacco of different kinds.
http://vietnamnews.vn/society/253188/illegally-imported-tobacco-impounded.html
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