Licenced brands are important in our businesses. Licenced brands like Frozen, Sesame Street, Disney and Peppa Pig.
They are licenced brands because they are licenced by the owner of the intellectual property and represent large investment in developing the licence.
The challenge is that these products can be easily copied and governments are under-resourced in detecting and stopping copyright infringement.
Some suppliers of licenced products to our channel are funding legal action to protect their interests and the interests of their partner retailers. I welcome this as I only source genuine licenced products. It angers me when I see a retailer selling a knock-off.
The photo is from a retailer near my newsagency. It took it on Saturday. Their Peppa Pig product is not licenced. The items in the photo are illegal knock-offs. What makes matters worse is that some of the items have been so poorly made that they pose a health risk in my view.
Newsagents selling licenced products need to be part of the compliance regime. We should report to our suppliers when we see retailers selling products that are not officially licenced. Such reports should include details of the outlet and photos of product. We should also report these infringements to IP Australia and the ACCC.
I’d also suggest informing staff members so they can speak to customers as appropriate.
In my own case I am letting the landlord know because any retailer selling illegal copies is a breach of the lease of just about any major landlord. I suspect the landlord could be the first to act out of the various bodies I could complain to.
I will also take it up with the group brand under which the retailer trades under. However, it’s possible they are involved.
I did try and speak with the manager of the shop. Their reprocess was that they did not speak English. True.
Taking action matters because we pay a higher price to access genuine licenced product. This is something to protect for us, for the licence owner and for the consumer who purchases Peppa Pig product believing it to be genuine.
A while back I witnessed a store (didn’t appear to be part of a chain, had very simple fit-out and isn’t listed in the online centre directory suggesting that its some sort of temporary/pop-up shop) in Robina Town Centre on the gold coast openly selling products that violate the IP of both LEGO AND a number of entities LEGO has licensing agreements with such as DC Comics and Marvel Comics.
Anyone know what I should do to report such infringement in the future? Is there a web page or something for entities like ACCC or IP Australia that I can use to report things for investigation? Is there a “right way” to report such things to the managers/landlord of the centre? (I have no connection to Robina Town Centre other than as a customer)
It makes me so MAD when quality brands like LEGO have their IP so blatantly ripped off and that retail stores can get away with openly selling such product.
Jonathan from what I understand the best first place to go is the local office of the IP licence holder such as Lego and Marvel. I’d also complain to the ACCC.
They could be legit though. Even coles have had some lego type products recently. Lego’s patent expired some years back now and other brands have been slowly making inroads. Wikipedia has a good section on it. In target recently over christmas they had more Mega Blocks than Lego. Bit sad for a Lego fan to see that. Some of the other brands do look quite cheap though.