Heavy Duty Trucking, July 2015
part where it becomes brittle He recalls an incident where the company heard about someone selling Meritor parts that it said had been treated What we discovered was some guy in an abandoned strip mall in Florida They werent even our customers They were buying our parts somewhere else and then treating them Bickford also says Meritor sees some issues with gray market parts This is where people are bringing in parts from other markets that are similar in form fit and function but are not designed for use in our markets Another big problem Bickford sees is people not respecting Meritors intellectual property Someone will take our intellectual property create a product for a less developed market and then people in North America will pick up on it because they shop on the Internet Rotman says violations of intellectual property cause confusion in the market Companies seek IP protection through patents and trademarks because they come up with a unique idea and when we are granted a patent no one else can make the product the same way we do Product vs package Counterfeiters are not likely to violate patents because they are not interested in making the large investments required to copy sophisticated parts Patent violations are more likely to be made by companies already in the industry using their own brand Counterfeiters will however copy packaging in an attempt to make their products appear legitimate and that could be a violation of trade dress a form of trademark The product and packaging are often created separately according to Danas Rotman A counterfeiter will often reverse engineer and produce the copied product without markings or packaging They recreate the packaging go to a printer and ask them to make the package he says A product without any markings isnt a counterfeit product yet It is just an unmarked product It may look like Danas and may not infringe our patents He adds You are allowed to reverse engineer a product make it and sell it as long as it does not infringe a patent and does not contain brand name markings But when the packaging and product are brought together and sold as the original branded product that is when it becomes counterfeiting Circle 209 on Reader Action Card www truckinginfo com JULY 2015 HDT 51
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