Liao Peigui was convicted of operating a phony official Olympics website and taking money under false pretenses was sentenced to six months in prison in Beijing.

The Haidian District People’s Court of Beijing Municipality passed the jail sentence and a fine of RMB2,000 ($271) for defrauding two netizens into entering fake prize draws on a website he ‘cloned’ from the official BOCOG site.

His method was to get entrants to transfer and ‘award acceptance fee’ of RMB1,500 ($203) to an account he opened in March. For this they would get prizes which included RMB28,000($3,798) and two tickets for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Liao Peigui had worked as a computer engineer in south China’s Hainan Province.

China launched a six-month campaign last April targeting online pornography, fraud and theft.
Source: Windows of China

Beijing is battling to stamp out illegal sales of 2008 Olympic merchandise on dozens of unauthorized Web sites seeking to cash in on the Chinese public’s Games fervor.

The Beijing Youth Daily , citing an Olympic e-commerce official, said authorities had investigated about 80 commercial and personal Web sites selling fake Olympic merchandise, or lacking licenses to sell the legitimate product.

Xie Funing, a spokesman with the Olympic E-commerce Operation Centre said, ‘The supply channels on these illegal Web sites are chaotic.’

Many Web sites lacked legal proof of the origins of their products, while others had ‘exploited consumers’ urgency to buy merchandise by raising prices and ripping them off.

Beijing Olympic organizers have targeted making $70 million from merchandising from the 2008 Games, from a range of about 4,000 products.

Local media reports of police busting fake Games souvenir makers and street peddlers are common. Law enforcement agencies seized nearly 30,000 finished or half-finished Olympic fakes in the capital earlier this year. Our illustration is, but of course, of genuine Olympics souvenirs being sold.
Source: Reuters

Inspectors have uncovered 1,556 trademark violation cases involving the Beijing Olympics. Of these, 428 cases have been uncovered since the beginning of 2006. The figures were released by the State Administration of Industry and Commerce’s trademark bureau. Violations include the illegal use of Olympic slogans, logos, and other trademarks.

The 1,128 cases before 2006 involved goods worth $1.9 million, incurring fines of $1.1 million. No monetary figures were reported for the cases since 2006.

Trademarked products stand to generate significant revenue for the Beijing Games. Sale of licensed products, brought in about $300 million at the last Olympics. Host cities keep 10 to 15% of the royalties.

Chinese officials have sought to quash fears of widespread faking of Olympic branded items. Li Dongsheng, an administration deputy director, said the organization had registered the seven main Beijing Olympic trademarks, including the ‘friendlies’, a set of five Olympic mascots. Plans are moving forward to register 69 other Olympic trademarks, including the torch design.
Source: Houston Chronicle

The idea of infringing on the Olympics trademark seems, to an outsider, to be the daftest way to make a slightly dodgy quid. For certain sure you will be arrested. (Those in our picture are genuine and quite snazzy. Good stuff.)

Six people who tried were arrested by Hong Kong Customs officers. In the raids at Wan Chai, Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok, Customs officers from the Intellectual Property Investigation Bureau seized from seven hawker stalls about 350 pieces of goods, including key rings, watches, caps, badges and stickers, worth about $897.

Most of the seized goods bore the Official Mascots of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Three men and three women, aged between 40 and 60, were arrested during the Customs’ operation.

After the operation, Customs officers sought help from Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the 29th Olympiad, the trademark owner, in trademark identification. Initial Customs investigation showed that the goods were of low quality and priced about half of the genuine goods sold at official channels.

Hong Kong Customs has stepped up surprise checks in the region, taking stringent enforcement against selling activities of counterfeit Beijing 2008 Olympic Games products. The Beijing 2008 Olympics’ equestrian events will be held in Hong Kong in 2008.
Source: China Daily