More Fakes

John, you've mentioned Apple many times when this subject comes up but with respect, fake coins and fake Apple products are, well, comparing apples and oranges.

Apple products are technologically complex. They are made from many components, each often patentable, and produced by many subcontractors. All of these complex parts are assembly, again by subcontractors (FoxConn being the largest).

Suggesting that Apple and RCM have similar products and similar strategies for combating counterfeiting is not reasonable. Fake coins are easy to produce. Fake (working) iPhones are not.

In any case, any tech company that manufactures in China (which is about 99.99% of them) knows that their technology is going to be reverse engineered and copied. It's a business reality as is over production of products which get sold (read stolen) by subcontractors and/or employees.

When a new product (component) is created, the best defence is to be first to market, sell as much as you can before it's copied and move on to the next innovation. Companies also separate as many component sub contractors as possible so that no one supplier has access to 100% of the technology.

I think the example you should be using is a company like Burberry. They have a relatively simple product that are easily identified (unique plaid patterns) and very easily copied. Like the RCM, there are fakes of their products all over ebay. I wonder what Burberry's legal counsel are doing about that?

I'm not suggesting that counterfeiting is ok and the RCM shouldn't do whatever they can to combat it but I also do not know what activities the RCM's legal department may or may not being doing. I also haven't seen anything that states or suggests that the RCM "believes fakes will help their business model". I'd be very interested in hearing their explanation for that logic.

If the RCM legal department has contacted ebay on this issue, would you see the constant listing of openly faked RCM products. I do agree that some popular items don't have the resources to combat the issue effectively. We all know almost everything is faked, but not openly available on the world's largest marketplace.

i think the first thing the RCM needs to do is have places,like alibaba website shutdown, they are the biggest platform for people to get the coins in the first place. Then they need the help of customs to start intercepting the coins that are coming over in the mail..I think if these 2 issues are addressed, then there would be very little of it on ebay..Instead of trying to cut the snake's tail off, go right for the head..

What does the Chinese government do about faked Chinese issued coins?

Nothing because it's not illegal as well as in other countries. In Spain for example, is not illegal neither.

Bah, as long as these are marked as not being official releases, who cares? It's no different than all those copper rounds reproducing famous US coins. A talk about copyright/trademark is not really fitting on a coin collecting website.

Here's a question that I'm not sure has been asked before.

If a buyer purchases counterfeit coins knowing they are counterfeit coins, and they're intercepted by Canadian customs or the package is inspected by Canadian customs, couldn't the customer be charged with importing counterfeit coins? These coins look almost identical to the ones produced by the RCM. Owning counterfeit coins is illegal and I'm wondering if the people purchasing these coins on ebay or other sites realize how much trouble they could encounter.

I'd hate to be one of those buyers who purchases a cheap set for little Timmy only to be greeted at the door by an officer enforcing the Criminal Code