Sale of fake famous brand audio equipment in Guangdong brought to an end

Wedemark (ots) - 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 E390 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 .

Pressekontakt:
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