In the past couple of years, with the continuing development of the Internet, many illegal businesses have been using the Internet to sell counterfeits, infringing others’ lawful rights. The investigation department of our company has been receiving an increasing amount of reports on similar cases. Therefore, the investigators of our company conducted investigations and tracings based on several cases of online publication of infringement information. We accumulated some methods for handling these cases and would like share with you. 

This year in March, we received the report that a company had been selling on its website products that were very similar to the trademark registered by a client of our company, and committed infringement. Commissioned by the client, we immediately initiated the investigation.

Firstly, we scrutinized the information we obtained online and found several notable features of this case: first, the website was presented in multiple languages but not in Chinese, which indicated that the target enterprise was an exporting business and had not domestic trade; second, although the address posted on the enterprise’s website was located in a industrial park of City A, its contact numbers were from City B and were applied for concealment, as discovered by our investigators. Hence, we suspected that both the address and phone numbers left by the target enterprise were forged or false. The conclusion of analysis was that it would be very unlikely to locate the target enterprise based on the address and numbers on the website, leaving us an obvious difficulty for our investigation.

The saying “none of us is as smart as all of us” does make sense. The investigators and agents cooperated and found the breakthrough eventually. The agents suggested translate the possible Chinese names from the English name of this enterprise posted online and look up for the registered address of the enterprise through commerce inquiry, in order to complete onsite follow-up investigation. We therefore began with translating the English name of the target into 5 possible matching Chinese names. The investigators then took the 5 Chinese names and the contact numbers posted online, to the Administration for Industry and Commerce of A and then B, to undergo thorough commerce registration inquiry and phone number registration inquiry. The result suggested that, the enterprise had, actually, no industrial and commercial registration and was an enterprise without Chinese business certificate. The available numbers it posted online were either “concealed” or private. 

In order to further confirm the result of the commerce inquiry, our company sent several more investigators to visit the companies we found that were possibly related to the investigation target. The results showed that these companies were either irrelevant or nonexistent.

The case seemed to be unable to progress. Nonetheless, the commission was not completed and the investigators decided to sit down and discussed. At that point, one investigator pointed out the possibility for the enterprise to be registered in Hong Kong or Macau. It was possible that it had no documentation in any administrations in the mainland, or that it had no actual working place but attracted business through publishing information on domestic websites. This hint offered a new breakthrough for our case. In the end, the investigators, using the “Cyber Search Centre of the Integrated Companies Registry Information System”, confirmed that investigation target was indeed a business registered in Hong Kong and used online marketing as its management model.

Through inquiries at several institutions, information collecting and onsite visits, we were able to confirm that the target was a company registered in Hong Kong and only did online marketing . The target provided several fake addresses and numbers online, and concealed the available numbers, indicating that there must have been sneaky purposes associated with theirs sales, and that they had been possibly selling counterfeits for profits and eluding the penalty of executive administrations. The target was also a very cunning business that used sophisticated self-protection methods. Its website could not be accessed through normal means, possibly an encrypted website or one that was only open to the abroad. 

According to the result of our investigation, we provided the client with all the information about the infringing company that we obtained from the related administration in Hong Kong, and tracked down valuable information of the sale representatives of the infringing company within the mainland. At the same time, we published a warning about this website that posted infringement information and filed complaints to the related domestic Internet regulation administrations, appealing for an end to the spread of the infringement information. 

We leant three lessons from dealing with this case:

1. Infringers who use the Internet for marketing and trade internationally usually have websites that cannot be accessed by normal means and require address proxies or online tool software. Also, the information posted on their websites, such as addresses and numbers, usually are false or contradictory, and the actually usable information is very limited. These features therefore require us to improve our Internet research, phone and website inquiry, and the integration analysis skills, in order to adapt to the investigation such type of cases. 

2. Such type of enterprises usually only possess English names but no specific Chinese names, making it harder to investigate than cases before. Therefore, in the course of industrial and commercial inquiry, Internet research and onsite visits, investigators should not solely rely on their own, but rather team up with the agents and the translators. They should be well prepared before the case, maintain prompt contact, and experiment with different domain names, listening to all kinds of ideas and utilizing the power contributed by each team member. 

3. It is necessary to review and analyze the new clues obtained in the investigation, and to give feedback and make decision immediately, turning the investigating process into a systematic project. Only through such way that the infringers can be traced and the client’s commission can be completed.