Philips, the market leader in lighting and electronic products in India, has carried out a raid against suppliers of spurious Philips products. This latest raid at Mumbai's Lamington Road, is part of the on-going crackdown on unscrupulous traders and manufacturers profiteering from the illegal use of the Philips' brand name and has yielded large quantities of spurious electronic spare parts, earphones, and audio & video head sprays.

Since January 2000, the Company has stepped up its actions against false products. Regular raids have been conducted throughout India on traders/ manufacturers of spurious Philips products. This movement has now gained considerable momentum with the active support of law enforcement agencies.

In one such action today, on a complaint lodged with the local police station, officers from the D B Marg (Lamington Road) Police Station together with Company representatives carried out simultaneous raids at the shop premises of M/s Himal Electronics at 17 Proctor Road, Opposite Grant Hotel, Grant Road, Mumbai - 400 007 and the premises of M/s Khodiyar Electronics, Proctor Road, Grant Road, Mumbai - 400 007. Both parties have been selling spurious 'Philips' branded products. The products seized today are valued at Rs1.42 lakhs.

Several of the raids conducted by Philips have yielded fake company seals, which are used to create counterfeit products of Philips. Products/ company seals of other companies have also been found during the raids. The spurious items once seized are kept in police custody. While spurious goods constitute a small portion of the total market, Philips has resolved to aggressively wipe out this illegal trade, so that consumer's are not deprived of the quality and reliability of genuine Philips products. While New Delhi is believed to be a major hub for the manufacture of counterfeit products, the Company has carried out raids against illegal manufactures in cities like Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kanpur, Kolkata, Noida and Mumbai.

These continuing raids reflect the Company's resolve to stamp out counterfeit products from the market and prevent the fake products from reaching consumers.

One of these counterfeted products still reaching the consumers in massive amounts are printer cartridges of various brands. Pretection has identified several of the, mostly Asian, organisations selling these and other kinds of electronic products. Thanks to its online sales monitoring service Pretection is able to scan the World Wide Web for these kinds of infringements on a global scale in all languages. Online perpetrators are identified and this information will be communicated to the client making it possible to arrest the responsible persons.