Silk Street market to file countersuit in fake brands issue
06 Apr '06
2 min read
Beijing's famous Silk Street market is putting in effort to collect evidence of entrapment against five international fashion companies who have alleged that fake brand-name goods were sold here.
General Manager Wang Zili said, the market plans to sue Chanel, Prada, Burberry, Louis Vuitton and Gucci for lowering the market's reputation with allegations that fake prestige brands are sold openly there.
Wang claimed the market is not responsible for purchases of fake goods by the five companies from the market.
Foreign and Chinese people come to market every day and some of them may have bought fake goods under the table, which is not possible to be controlled by market managers, Wang said.
The international firms sued the market and five business stalls last November for allegedly selling fake products in their name.
They had demanded yuan2.5 million ($310,000) in compensation.
Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court had ordered the market and the stall owners to pay each of the five international companies yuan20,000 ($2,500) last December.
The market appealed to the Higher People's Court of Beijing.
Wang said the possibility of entrapment could not be ruled out if the brand-name firms had bought fake copies of their products after such goods had disappeared from the market.
During the first hearing, lawyers representing the companies submitted a notarized document as evidence that they had bought fake goods at the market.
marketing@alchempro.com
