Watch out for the lawyers

The FT's diary section today reports (subscription required) IP lawyers at a chemicals trade show in Scotland hitting 37 Chinese companies with injunctions over patent infringement. The report says:

Companies in the UK are using a novel approach to find knock-offs of their products: going to trade fairs, where the offending goods are often displayed out in the open.


Actually, not so novel. As companies who have participated in the big sourcing fairs in Hong Kong and Guangzhou can attest, knock-offs have been a fact of life for years and many companies have used IP lawyers, sometimes targeting the fair organisers as well as the exhibitors. The Canton Fair people have told us that they employ almost 100 people in the IP department. It seems like a lot although, when you look at the types of companies exhibiting and the number of them - 12 - 15,000 - keeping them all in line is certainly a big job.

A front page report on the same issue (open to non-subscribers), identifies BASF as one of the three main complainants here.