Professional counterfeiters intend not to be protected by consumer law, which leads to disputes： most of them are malicious claims.

　　"Since 2014, the claims of professional counterfeiters in retail chain enterprises such as supermarkets have been on the rise", and the redefinition of the behavior of professional counterfeiters in the Implementation Regulations of the Consumer Protection Law (Draft for Comment) recently issued by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (hereinafter referred to as the Draft for Comment) has aroused social concern. Yesterday, at the symposium sponsored by China Chain Store & Franchise Association and China Food Industry Association, more than 50 large supermarkets and suppliers bombarded professional claimants. In the eyes of trade associations and legal professionals, the accurate definition of professional counterfeiters should be "professional claimants", and some counterfeiting acts for the purpose of claiming compensation have constituted illegal crimes.

　　> > news background

　　Professional counterfeiting is not subject to the protection of consumer law and is controversial.

　　Not long ago, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce promulgated the Regulations on the Implementation of the Law on the Protection of Consumers’ Rights and Interests (draft for comments). Among them, the second article in the draft for comments attracted the most attention. "If consumers buy or use goods or receive services for their daily consumption needs, their rights and interests are protected by these regulations. However, these regulations do not apply to the purchase, use of goods or acceptance of services by natural persons, legal persons and other organizations other than financial consumers for profit. " Public opinion generally believes that this means that the professional anti-counterfeiting behavior of knowing and buying fakes will no longer be protected by the consumer law.

　　This clause has aroused widespread discussion in the society. Some people think that professional counterfeiters have gradually become a profit-seeking industry, occupying and consuming a lot of administrative public resources. However, there are also views that the emergence of professional counterfeiters is precisely because some businesses have problems in real life, such as irregular production, lax audit and careless inspection. Individual consumers often submit to humiliation because of the high cost of rights protection. If the professional counterfeiters are excluded by law, the illegal cost of the enterprise will be reduced to a certain extent. In the long run, the ultimate damage will definitely be the interests of every consumer.

　　> > enterprise statement

　　Most professional counterfeiters are malicious counterfeiters.

　　More than 50 large retail enterprises including Carrefour, RT Mart, Wumei, CR Vanguard, Johnson & Johnson, Diageo, Hershey, and other relevant responsible persons of supplier enterprises attended yesterday’s meeting. They all said that as enterprises, they must abide by national laws and regulations. If enterprises really make fakes and have food safety problems, they will be fined without complaint, but professional counterfeiters are more malicious counterfeiters, and it is difficult for enterprises to have complete monitoring evidence, and their actions seriously interfere.

　　"On average, every store in RT Mart now encounters seven or eight malicious counterfeiting every day, which is particularly serious recently." Pan Bingwei, the person in charge of RT Mart, said that, for example, they stepped on good goods in advance, bought 10 expired goods but settled them for 10 times, and the retail price of each product was only a few dollars, but they easily earned about 10,000 yuan through claims.

　　"The most troubled thing is that counterfeiters make their own fakes," Pan Bingwei said. Fake gangs usually take expired goods into the supermarket and hide them in a corner. The second person goes in to buy them, and the third person claims. Even the best video in the supermarket can’t be 100% monitored. Their success rate of "counterfeiting" is almost 100%.

　　"We have a store where five people sold 19 items and settled them in 19 times." Sun Wenbo, the person in charge of Wumart, said that our monitoring found that these people put the goods in the back seat of the car and immediately took out the same goods from the trunk to the supermarket to complain that the goods were expired. In addition, the supermarket has also been monitored and found that some people specially selected the refrigerated goods that have expired for two or three days, hid them in the diapers of pregnant and baby babies, took them out in two or three days, and then went directly to the service desk to claim compensation. "In this case, if we shoot the whole process, we will call the police immediately, but it is difficult for more than 95% to have monitoring evidence, so enterprises often have no counterattack power in front of such professional counterfeiters."

　　"Some’ counterfeiters’ even tamper with the date of production of goods." Sun Wenbo said.

　　> > viewpoint

　　Occupation claimants occupy administrative resources.

　　"From July 2014 to June this year, Johnson & Johnson was involved in more than 50 professional claims because of the telephone problem in the label." Relevant persons of Johnson & Johnson China said that although the company had already made rectification, these professional claimants had put pressure on 32 cases through the government administrative department when the claim failed.

　　"According to the survey of the association, one enterprise was forced to pay the mediation fee of’ professional claimant’ as high as 10 million yuan in 2012, which seriously affected the normal operation of the enterprise." Chu Dong, deputy secretary-general of China Chain Association, said that’ professional claimant’ did not hesitate to damage the hard-won brand reputation of the merchants in order to achieve their own selfish interests, but also abused government administrative resources and used online media to create public dissatisfaction with the enterprise and the government.

　　"Once their claims are rejected, these people complain to the regulatory authorities, ask the government departments to intervene, and even put pressure on the regulatory authorities by means of administrative reconsideration, administrative litigation and government information disclosure." Mao Weiqi, director of Beijing Shangzuo Law Firm, which specializes in food safety legal services, said that according to his contact with the drug regulatory authorities, there are about 1,500 professional claimants active in Beijing, some of whom are organized, including professional legal persons and technicians. Their massive complaints take up a lot of time and energy of supervisors and take up the already tense administrative resources.

　　Support counterfeiting but oppose profit-making claims

　　"It is illegal to tamper with the production date and replace expired products, and the circumstances are serious and even constitute a crime." Mao Weiqi said that the pure act of knowing and buying fakes should still be supported. After all, it has a certain supervisory effect on the market. However, there are two kinds of situations in which consumers knowingly buy fake food. One is that consumers intentionally buy food before buying it, and the other is that professional claimants with certain professional skills deliberately buy unsafe food for the purpose of making profits, and then claim rights as consumers.

　　"In the first case, it should be recognized as a consumer and entitled to compensation according to law," Mao Weiqi said, but for professional claimants or anti-counterfeiting organizations, although their anti-counterfeiting is objectively conducive to curbing counterfeiting and selling fakes, considering that it is an organized and regular activity, it does not meet the definition of consumers in the Consumer Law, so it is not appropriate to determine its consumer identity.

　　"In fact, professional claimants use the non-subjective and accidental mistakes of production and operation enterprises to damage the brand reputation of businesses and coerce the other party to pay higher compensation than that stipulated by law." Chu Dong said that consumers and professional claimants are essentially different. The biggest feature of the latter is that they only buy problematic goods, which are organized, have legal background but have no legitimate occupation, and have high purchase frequency, strong profit-making purpose and coercive language and behavior. "We support anti-counterfeiting, but resolutely oppose the claim for profit-making and non-living consumption." (Reporter Hu Xiaohong)

(Original title: Professional counterfeiters are not intended to be protected by consumer law, causing controversy. Retail enterprises expose professional claims. "Professional counterfeiters mostly claim maliciously")