Spyderco Forums

ugaarguy wrote:Sal, has there been any effort by the Spyderco legal team to directly contact US Customs or file complaints or requests for enforcement through the OIG of the US Postal Service? It seems most of these knives are shipped to individuals via international mail with shipping within the US handled by the USPS through reciprocal international mail agreements. Would that not fall under the jurisdiction of the US Postal Inspectors who are under the Inspector General of the USPS?

Hi ugaarguy,
We can't get into specifics, but I can say that we've utilized every possible avenue and will continue to do so. It's a very complex and challenging issue with factors that seem to change from day to day. We do appreciate the support and all the efforts of everyone who watches out for us. The posts that are made in this area of the forum are a huge help and a great resource.

Kristi

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/HK-Free- ... 37845.html

:eek: Also Ti Military now.... And I do not see any difference! :mad:

Pomelly wrote:http://www.aliexpress.com/item/HK-Free- ... 37845.html

:eek: Also Ti Military now.... And I do not see any difference! :mad:

They wouldn't be very good at counterfeiting if you could.

I'm sure the actual product is quite different...the picture might even be photoshopped or a stolen stock photo.

Blerv wrote:They wouldn't be very good at counterfeiting if you could.

I'm sure the actual product is quite different...the picture might even be photoshopped or a stolen stock photo.

I hope... :o

I just got into this a couple weeks ago, but now that I've taken in enough info to form IMO a decent idea of how to differentiate a real Spyderco product from a counterfeit (Mostly pm2's) but some carry over to other models. I've noticed A lot more selling them on ebay as the real deal to unsuspecting buyers hungry enough to look past the red flags just to have that Hot model in hand Now.. This also correlates to the increased orders on the "China" Express Site - more people are buying lots instead of singles which indicates to me that they are reselling.... Taking advantage of the pm2's shortages & taking advantage of potential new customers wallets (not to mention Spydercos reputation for high quality cutlery). I know all this has to have come up before but I just had to get it out of my system... I think it stinks..

Even worse, apparently Alibaba.com is going public and is listed in New York. I just did a quick search on their website (alibaba.com), typed in Spyderco and found nothing trustworthy. A Spyderco Warrior that costs $85 a piece and they're able to supply 100.000 a month.. Maybe it's just my inability to do a decent search, but that doesn't sound very comforting.

If they have a US presence they can be hauled into US courts.

Pinetreebbs wrote:If they have a US presence they can be hauled into US courts.

Hopefully.. This whole situation is sickening.

I have a PM2. A "friend" of mine (an annoying... person) bought a copy from one of these Chinese sites and tried to show it off to me. I opened it up, locking it fully, and carefully pushed down on the back of the blade with the handle on a bench. The "lock" just gave way easily.

Comparing the two knives the fake had a much steeper bevel on the root of the blade: allowing wider manufacturing tolerances but making the lock useless. There were a lot of other bad points, once you looked closely, and of course the blade was badly sharpened and soft (probably 3Cr13).

The point is that these fakes are not only a waste of time and money, a threat to good manufacturers and intellectual property theft but they can be DANGEROUS.

The same guy tells me there are now loads of UKPKs on the same site he used - some people never learn.

Looking at the feedback on that web site, some of the buyers seem to be well aware they're buying fakes. Can't understand that myself.

Cant US customs just stop allowing private importation of knives?

It seems like areas of the U.S. are tightening up knife laws, doesn't it seem kind of backwards to be allowing cheap knives to be bought from overseas on an individual basis at the same time?

I'm certain in Australia they would be stopped at customs from coming in.

sal wrote:We met with and spoke with our congressman regarding the counterfit issue. He wasn't aware that there was a problem. We're trying to get the Government to get involved in what we believe is a serious problem to the econony of our country. Spyderco is certainly not the only named brand being counterfeited.

Ali Baba is trying to get a seat on the US stock exchange. I guess that will legitimize counterfeiting :confused:

I guess we can try a grass roots effort? Maybe contact our congress representatives to alert them to the problem? I know many companies like; Zippo, clothing mfrs, watch mfrs, videos etc. have been fighting this for a long time. 'Tis a puzzlement.

sal

Hi Sal- I discussed this with The Better Half (she's a jeweller)- and she shared some data about how bad this has got in the fashion industry:

4 out of 5 of all Louis Viutton handbags are fake....Only 20% you see on a given day in a large city will be genuine- That's a worrying place to be, and I want to be part of the solution that prevent Spyderco ending up in that situation.

We all, as customers and loyal brand fans, need to get the word out to our knife-buying friends about these fakes and ensure wherever we can that people don't put a penny their way.

I can stamp "S30V" on a slice of processed cheese and it don't make it steel.

Given the global economy, access to foreign markets and basic greed, attempting legal remedies won't work. Like Prohibition, the "war on drugs" and keeping fakes out of the country — it didn't work, isn't working and won't work. I think we need a way to readily identify the real article and educate buyers on what that is.

As long as there is a market for them they will keep selling, and there seems to be a rather large market.

Supply and demand.

SuckSqueezeBangBlow wrote:Cant US customs just stop allowing private importation of knives?

It seems like areas of the U.S. are tightening up knife laws, doesn't it seem kind of backwards to be allowing cheap knives to be bought from overseas on an individual basis at the same time?

I'm certain in Australia they would be stopped at customs from coming in.

Hopefully not. You do realize that this would also ban many legitimate knife purchases? For example, I never would have been able to buy these extremely rare Workers from Japan:

Yes, the other major flaw in my idea is that companies would then import crates of fakes and resell them locally.
How/why would customs decline them as being counterfeit if all the paperwork was in order?

One possibility is to use a visible serial number on each knife. This number would be assigned by the manufacturing facility in coordination with the Spyderco main office database. It could be tracked as to where and when it was made, where it was sold (distributed) and which authorized retailer ended up with it. Even if the knife/serial number were not further tracked to the end purchaser, there would be a record of each knife. If a fake used a serial number not in Spyderco's database, which could be available on line for serial number history, it would be easy to tell if the knife was a genuine article and where it was made available for retail sale. It wouldn't be foolproof, but might put a big dent in foreign made fakes. If I tracked a serial number of a knife that went to a USA retailer and was being offered by a different eBay seller, for example, I'd know something was wrong right away.

Without a solid grasp of what characteristics authentic models of Spyderco knives have, and if the fake were well made, I would be hard pressed to know the difference.

Alibaba is Getting sued in the US by luxury good makers. Perfect because they are still openly selling counterfeit Spyderco goods.

"A group of luxury goods makers sued Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA.N) on Friday, contending the Chinese online shopping giant had knowingly made it possible for counterfeiters to sell their products throughout the world.

The lawsuit was filed in Manhattan federal court by Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and other brands owned by Paris-based Kering SA (PRTP.PA) seeking damages and an injunction for alleged violations of trademark and racketeering laws.

The lawsuit alleged that Alibaba had conspired to manufacture, offer for sale and traffic in counterfeit products bearing their trademarks without their permission."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/ ... E120150516" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102685507" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I couldn't afford a real PM2, so I turned to aliexpress, I've got to say it isn't bad but you can see straight away it isn't real, I'm working on getting enough money together for the real thing but may take a while :confused:
I also want a dragonfly 2 but again I have no money:(
Ive only just got into knives and started with a Lansky World Legal, however it bored me and I wanted to move onwards but unfortunately all my money is going in my training for the army so that's my priority but as soon as I get in ill be getting several real different models and I can't wait :D
But back to the copy PM2 as I said it isn't bad, has a bit of play and obviously isn't S30V but I only really bought it to play with at home.
But I'm really excited to own a real one :D

SuckSqueezeBangBlow wrote:Cant US customs just stop allowing private importation of knives?

It seems like areas of the U.S. are tightening up knife laws, doesn't it seem kind of backwards to be allowing cheap knives to be bought from overseas on an individual basis at the same time?

I'm certain in Australia they would be stopped at customs from coming in.

You'd need a million highly trained customs inspectors inspecting every container of merchandise coming in to the US every day to stop the counterfeit goods market. As it stands with the available manpower less than 1% of the merchandise coming into the US gets inspected for trademark and patent infringement. It's an impossible task and as long as there's a black market for these goods then they will continue showing up regardless of the laws set up.

Unless or until congress passes a law to criminalize ownership of counterfeit goods this will continue. As it stands right now a person can enter the US and declare they have a certain number of counterfeit goods and be allowed to keep them without seizure, penalty, or fine.

If you've seen a US seaport or land border port of entry the scope and magnitude of the cargo coming into the US is obviously overwhelming. If not, it's easy to say more regulations and oversight will help. The government would have to take draconian measures to stop it and I don't think many business people or the US population in general would like it.

Right now as it stands if your stuff gets selected for inspection you are responsible for paying all fees associated with the inspection even if the government finds nothing wrong with the shipment. That's a big cost. Imagine the price of your latest Taichung knife shooting up 50 to 100% to cover the cost of inspection to ensure that no clones make it to the market. And imagine you as a business owner having to not only front the cost for transportation, space acquisition, and inspection fees, but having to wait an additional 6 months to get your product because of how long it takes to be inspected.

There's no way to conceivably stop it without locking up the US marketplace across all sectors because there are trademark, patent, and copyright infringements in all areas so all areas would need to be inspected. That's a ridiculous notion to anyone familiar with the process.

Even then, the companies have to pay a fee to be added to a database of protected companies. If they don't pay that fee, the customs inspectors cannot know if the product they're looking at has violated some trademark or another. while it's nice to believe customs can know everything about every product, they can't. If knife afis here have a hard time seeing a difference, can a guy who's never held a spyderco knife before see a difference? What about a coach purse? Or a certain microchip?

It's truly staggering.