A police raid on a Tarlac-based trading company dealing in office and school supplies reportedly yielded a huge cache of counterfeit Epson products.
Armed with a search warrant against the RYJEL Office and School Supplie, the raiders found several boxes of fake products bearing unauthorized reproductions of the Epson trademark and designs.
Lawyer Jonathan Selvasegaram, head of the Southeast Asia division of React, a global not-for-profit organization that has been fighting the counterfeit trade for more than 30 years. Said they have been assisting Epson, which has a Philippine office, in its campaign against counterfeit goods.
“The Philippines is an important market for Epson,” said Hideo Shimamura, Epson manager in charge of the company’s intellectual property in Southeast Asia.
“Unfortunately, the trade in counterfeit Epson ink bottles has been growing over the last couple of years. Trading of fake Epson products done online has become particularly serious and is hurting the business of shops selling genuine ink products,” he added.
Alerted by the Tarlac trading company’s suspicious activities online, Shimamura’s Singapore-based office asked Philippine authorities, to look into the matter.
“We commend the raiding team for the swift action against an errant online seller,” Selvasegaram said. The raiding team, he added, found boxes that contained 823 bottles of counterfeit Epson printer inks and 44 fake Epson ribbon cartridges. There were also three empty boxes that carried the Epson label.
“The selling of counterfeit products, such as fake Epson ink bottles, has been going on for years but it has sharply increased – both in occurrence and magnitude – since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic when most consumers began making their purchases online,” Selvasegaram noted.
“We urge all online sellers to ensure they are only selling genuine products,” he said. “Selling online does not mean you can avoid being prosecuted by the law.”
“Meanwhile, consumers buying online need to be wary of counterfeits passed off as genuine being sold online,” Selvasegaram added. “Online shopping platforms also need to be more active in taking preventive steps by verifying and ensuring products sold are genuine.”
“We need everyone’s cooperation to put a stop to this illegal trade that is hurting honest businesses, consumers and the economy in general,” he said.