Police take down Counterfeit Heritage Grill Seller

With black Friday coming up you may be able to get some of that knock off crap on sale

 

Brand protection and differentiation is serious business.

 

After a collision I replaced the front end on my old Mercury Mariner. I ordered an aftermarket grille from a body shop and I had to save the Mercury emblem out of the old grille. They explained that they could reproduce and sell the grille because that particular part wasn't trademarked but they didn't have the rights to reproduce the trademarked emblem.

An explainer (with a section that applies specifically to grilles!): https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/09/19/oem-trademarks-aftermarket-exploring-boundaries/id=101163/

 

I sure feel safer now.

Imagine if the government spent these kind of resources keeping the border secure, or going after the violent criminals who are stealing watches off people at gunpoint in broad daylight.

 

Was this you as a kid?

 

Yeah, pretty much.

 

Try living in areas in and around Chicago.... Its probably easier/safer to chase sellers of knockoff grill parts....

 

Remember, the state serves the interests of the rulers. If the police are responsive to Amazon and not the needs of private citizens, that should tell you whom the rulers deem important.

 

Waste of resources. Reallocate efforts to remove violent criminals, car jackers, cat thieves, stolen firearms from the streets.

 

Was the Suspect selling the Counterfeit Grills as Toyota Products.
I tried a screen shot of the packaging and could not tell if the boxes had Toyota numbers or not.

 

Everyone buys these because they're 1/3 the cost of real OEM grills.

 

Lol

 

Body shops do not get OEM parts, regardless of whether they have the logo on them or not, from dealerships. That would be insanely expensive and inefficient. The dealership parts are either marked up for individual sale to owners or used for dealership repairs. Dealerships, like independent auto body shops, get their OEM parts from large distributors. Keep in mind that OEM parts are made by a bunch of different manufacturers. Toyota doesn’t manufacture all their own stuff.

 

what do we think boys? Throw him in the slammer?

 

So different scenario right…this isn’t a counterfeit OEM part, it’s a custom part that utilizes a trademark without permission. Meso for example got a cease and desist letter from Toyota over his TRD wheel center caps for Methods (of which I’ve acquired a set he made before Toyota cut him off and proudly sport them). So, trademark infringement, civil issue I believe. Counterfeit part, criminal…

 

Hah!! I'm guilty!


However I do have an OEM grille and garnish on my offroad, pain in the butt to get.

 

didnt see any Toyota part numbers on the boxes, or claims that they were legitimate Toyota parts. Can't really be counterfeit if they don't claim to be the real thing, that would be like calling monopoly money counterfeit currency. Seems like the exact same thing to me.

 

Still the case, need a pro vin usually, but usually you can give them one of their own lot.

 

Ironically, Amazon probably sells more counterfeit goods thru their site every single day than all of the counterfeit sales in history combined before Amazon came into existence. Holy shit, talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

 

All they had to do was misrepresent the parts as OEM to Amazon or in any marketing that was used on the Amazon listing. That’s all it takes to meet the requirement of the federal law.