Our reporter Liu Jinmeng photo

　　editorial comment/note

　　Since the emergence of "professional counterfeiters", this group has been controversial. It is undeniable that "professional counterfeiters" have played a positive role in promoting market purification and establishing consumers’ awareness of rights protection. However, when some of them are no longer aiming at solving consumer disputes, but demanding high compensation, or even falsifying evidence to extort money from businesses and using malicious complaints to report for their own profit, "counterfeiting" has changed its flavor.

　　"Counterfeiting" has become a "fake fight", which obviously deviates from the original intention of legislation and the original intention of protecting consumers. On the contrary, the real problem of consumer rights protection cannot be solved. In just three months, it involved cracking down on "malicious reporting of illegal profit-making behavior" and "taking ‘ Counterfeiting ’ The central document of the name of extortion was issued twice. At the legislative level, all localities have also strengthened the revision of relevant legal provisions and resolutely said no to extortion under the banner of "safeguarding rights."

　　Li Hua (pseudonym), the owner of a silk scarf dealer in Changchun, wanted to compromise and spend money when he was asked for compensation by a "professional counterfeiter" with a silk scarf material appraisal report. However, not long ago, he approached the Changchun Consumers Association for consultation, only to realize that he could first compare the report issued by the claimant with the quality inspection report of the goods themselves.

　　It was discovered by this comparison that the silk scarves inspected by the claimant were simply "crowned with pride" and the goods were completely different. Li Hua immediately reported the case and lamented that he "successfully escaped a robbery."

　　Recently, a survey by the Workers Daily reporter found that some people are actually making "professional claims" for illegal profits in the name of "professional counterfeiting". Its purpose is not to crack down on counterfeiting and protect consumer rights, but to demand high compensation, create a large number of malicious reports, and repeatedly extort money from businesses.

　　Change the bag, blackmail and pester the lawsuit, and "fake" becomes "fake"

　　Zhong Ping, secretary-general of Changchun Consumers Association, still remembers that more than ten years ago, a gentle and articulate complainant came to Changchun Consumers Association, reflecting that the food he bought in a supermarket violated the regulations and was labeled as health care function, and wanted to claim compensation.

　　After exchanging professional knowledge with him, the complainant said, "I have traveled a lot in Northeast China, as far as you know", and Zhong Ping realized that she had met a "professional counterfeiter". At that time, Zhong Ping was deeply impressed by this gentle and professional complainant with reasonable demands.

　　"At that time, I quite agree with the emergence of these people. Because they are very professional, their behavior can play a positive role in purifying the market, and the other is to urge our relevant staff to improve their business ability and quality. " Zhong Ping said.

　　"On our complaint platform, many people directly say that they are professional counterfeiters, and the scope of complaints is getting wider and wider." Zhong Ping said, "At first, most of them were aimed at food. Later, communication services, clothes, furniture and other commodities became the targets of counterfeiting, and many of them claimed for details such as product descriptions and advertising words."

　　After handling many cases, Zhong Ping gradually discovered that many "professional counterfeiters" have turned "counterfeiting" into fraud.

　　"Some people report maliciously, not for the purpose of purifying the market, but for asking merchants to take money privately, implement threats, false evaluations or even blackmail, falsify evidence and make illegal profits." Zhong Ping told reporters that she had been complained to the higher authorities by a very strong "professional counterfeiter". Once such cases were not handled as expected, they would repeatedly complain and importune.

　　The shopkeeper engaged in cross-border e-commerce in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province was threatened to report by a mother and son from Shanghai on the grounds of defective product labels, and had to "pay tribute" to 600 yuan’s goods every month for two consecutive years, until they were sentenced for extortion; A Taobao shop owner was targeted by "professional counterfeiters" for using exaggerated slogans and had to pay 2,000 yuan for recognition; The QQ group claiming for counterfeiting claims that it only needs 30 yuan to "learn from the teacher" to obtain the "claim tips" … …

　　According to the recent symposium on professional claim behavior, which was jointly attended by the market supervision department, China Consumers Association and enterprise representatives, in recent years, the number of malicious complaints and reports of "professional claim" initiated in the name of "counterfeiting" and "safeguarding rights" has exceeded 1 million every year.

　　In the court’s judgment, professional counterfeiters win or lose differently.

　　The reporter used "professional counterfeiting" as the key word in China’s refereeing documents online, and retrieved 1,382 refereeing documents this year, which was significantly lower than 3,348 last year. In many documents with a relatively recent date, the counterfeiters won or lost in court judgments, and most of them were sentenced to return the goods because of the real problems of the goods, and the multiple compensation claims were not supported.

　　In July 2018, the post-90s "professional counterfeiter" Han bought 12 bottles of imported brand red wine in a wholesale supermarket in Qingdao twice, paid 20,160 yuan for the wine, and filmed the whole purchase process. Subsequently, Han sued the supermarket to the court of the jurisdiction on the grounds that the imported red wine labels sold by the supermarket did not meet the national standards, requesting an order to return the purchase price and paying 10 times compensation of 201,600 yuan.

　　During the trial, the four effective judgments submitted by the defendant supermarket showed that Han had sued several different defendants at the same time in the Xiangzhou District People’s Court of Zhuhai City, Guangdong Province, and all of them demanded the defendants to refund the purchase price and pay 10 times the compensation on the grounds that the purchased products did not have Chinese labels. At the same time, the forms of evidence submitted by Han in several cases are basically the same. According to statistics, there are more than 50 cases in this batch, involving more than 4 million yuan.

　　The court of first instance ruled that the supermarket returned the payment of 20,160 yuan to Han, but did not support his claim of 10 times. Han refused to accept it and appealed to the Qingdao Intermediate People’s Court. The final judgment of Qingdao Intermediate People’s Court was changed: the supermarket returned the payment of 20,160 yuan to Han, and paid him compensation of 201,600 yuan, and Han returned the red wine.

　　"Professional counterfeiters" are not so lucky.

　　Xingmou has successively purchased 75 electric vehicles with a certain brand exceeding the standard, and commissioned the research institute to conduct testing. The results show that many items of electric vehicles are unqualified. Since 2017, Xing has gone through 17 court sessions, rulings and judgments, sued the court for a return and was punished with "one loses three". The Court of Final Appeal held that Xing, as a professional counterfeiter, did not buy or use goods or receive services for his daily needs, and was not a consumer as stipulated by law, so he did not support his claim of triple compensation.

　　Defining the red line is the key between legality and illegality.

　　"It’s a cold winter in the spring … … I suggest that all colleagues who fight counterfeiting must follow the principles of legitimacy, necessity, rationality and legality. " In April this year, "anti-counterfeiting fighter" Wang Hai said at the fifth "315 Anti-counterfeiting Forum" held in Beijing.

　　Wang Yuqi, a lawyer of Guangdong Guanghe (Changchun) Law Firm, told the reporter that from the actual case, there is only a thin line between the legality and illegality of professional counterfeiting, and the attitude of judicial practice is becoming more and more cautious.

　　The reporter of Workers Daily found that in recent days, many courts have issued judgments against "professional claimants" under the banner of "defending rights" and "counterfeiting", which are actually extortion.

　　For example, a 90-year-old man in Longyan, Fujian used the absolute term "extreme words" defined by the advertising law to make malicious complaints and extortion against online shop sellers, and was sentenced to 1 year and 8 months in prison by the court and fined 15,000 yuan; Shanghai Changning District Court sentenced Wang, a "professional claimant", to three years and three months in prison and fined him … … According to media reports, not long ago, four provinces and cities, including Henan and Xiamen, listed "professional counterfeiting" for extortion and illegal profits as "eliminating evils".

　　"The urgent task is to explore effective methods on the basis of summarizing the characteristics and problems of professional claims, and clearly define the red line between legal claims for professional counterfeiting and extortion. Reasonable and legal professional counterfeiting should be supported, but extortion must be punished. " Wang Yuqi said.

　　"Judging from the complaints this year, professional anti-counterfeiting behavior has been significantly reduced." Zhong Ping suggested that while opposing and severely punishing illegal counterfeiting, relevant departments should also formulate attractive reward mechanisms for legitimate "professional counterfeiters", guide them to exercise their anti-counterfeiting rights in the right way, play their positive role, and unblock the combination. Only in this way can the root cause be cured.

　　Some netizens also said that professional anti-counterfeiting was born to meet the market demand, and it was the market that finally exercised the right of elimination. Enterprises don’t sell fakes, product quality passes, and business integrity, counterfeiters will gradually disappear.

　　In the name of "counterfeiting", the act of making profits through malicious complaints will be restricted from next month. On January 1, 2020, the Interim Measures for Handling Complaints and Reports of Market Supervision and Management (hereinafter referred to as the Interim Measures) newly issued by the State Administration of Market Supervision will be officially implemented, which clearly stipulates that the complaints initiated by "not buying or using goods or receiving services for the needs of daily consumption, or not proving that there is a dispute between consumers and the respondent" will not be accepted by the market supervision and management department.

　　Professional claimant

　　Extortion in the name of counterfeiting

　　In recent years, a considerable number of professional claimants have appeared. They take advantage of the loopholes in the shelf life of goods and the description of advertising language, deliberately buy in large quantities, demand compensation from merchants, and even become professional claimants. These professional counterfeiters are usually parasitic on major e-commerce platforms, extorting money from merchants in the name of counterfeiting, using punitive damages for their own profit or taking the opportunity to extort money from merchants, and some behaviors seriously violate the principle of good faith, ignore judicial authority and waste judicial resources.

　　According to a survey conducted by the Shanghai Industrial and Commercial Department in 2016, among the occupational claims received by the 12315 Center in the first half of that year, only 20 cases really constituted consumer fraud after investigation, and the remaining 99.83% of the enterprises claimed had no substantial consumer fraud.

　　"Legal Daily" once reported that some counterfeiters used cotton cloth dipped in special medicine to erase the production date of goods, or used needles to stick holes in bread to claim compensation from merchants.

　　"Professional Chihuo"

　　If you receive a refund, you will be sued by Taobao.

　　The so-called "professional foodie" (only refund and no return) is a nickname for a professional claimant who has changed his technique on the Internet. Zhou, a Taobao buyer, registered a Taobao account with his identity information last year and began to place orders crazily, with 633 transactions a month.

　　Among them, from June 7 to June 16, 2018, 289 orders were placed, 281 refunds were applied for that month, 277 refunds were successful, and the actual refund amount was 3,854.54 yuan; During the period from July 1 to July 5, 2018, 344 orders were placed, 343 refunds were applied for that month, 335 refunds were successful, and the actual refund amount was 18,842.53 yuan. In the past month or so, Zhou has placed a total of 633 orders, only 624 applications were refunded, and 612 refunds were successful, amounting to more than 32,000 yuan. After receiving the goods, Zhou applied for 624 refunds but refused to return them.

　　On December 19, 2018, Taobao sued Zhou to Hangzhou Internet Court, demanding that the court order the defendant to compensate Taobao for its economic losses and reasonable expenses (legal fees) of 10,000 yuan.

　　Taobao believes that Zhou’s malicious refund behavior is an abuse of membership rights and a serious violation of the service agreement, which has caused a serious negative impact on Taobao’s economy and goodwill and should compensate for the losses.

　　After trial, Hangzhou Internet Court held that the application for refund only initiated by defendant Zhou obviously did not conform to ordinary people’s shopping habits, and the reasons for refund were repetitive and single. His behavior was an abuse of the rights of Taobao platform members, which damaged the reputation of Taobao sellers who operated honestly and legally, interfered with the normal operation order of Taobao, and made Taobao spend more material resources to deal with the defendant’s false complaints, causing actual losses to Taobao, and directly destroyed the integrity and fairness that Taobao and the whole society jointly advocated and devoted to building and maintaining. The court ruled that the defendant Zhou compensated Taobao for its economic loss of 1 yuan and reasonable expenses (legal fees) of 10,000 yuan. It is understood that this case is the first judgment made by the court in a series of cases in which Taobao sued for malicious refund.

　　Form an industrial chain

　　Showing a trend of gang specialization

　　The routine of malicious claims is getting deeper and deeper, even showing the trend of gang, specialization, scale and stylization, which is embodied in mentoring, training and output, focusing on packaging and publicity defects.

　　Professional claims consume four to five times as much resources as normal complaints, and public resources are squandered by a few gangs, which makes it impossible to deal with problems that really affect consumers and market order.

　　Official website, a law firm, shows that there are dozens of cases in which professional counterfeiters claim compensation. The Beijing Youth Daily reporter saw that Xiaomei, the owner of the online shop, said that a product sold in her shop was sold in bulk because of its large packaging, and it was caught by the professional counterfeiter "buyer" without QS label. The other party said, "Claim 10 times, and only refund is not returned". The store estimated that this single order of dried fruits with a price of more than 100 yuan, in addition to the loss of principal, had to pay compensation to 1000 yuan, which caused heavy losses. According to Xiaomei, there are more than 30 complaints from stores similar to her.

　　Text/reporter Yan Lishuang

　　Unlike professional counterfeiting,

　　The "malicious claims industry observation report" pointed out that, unlike professional counterfeiting, "professional claims" are often extorted in the name of counterfeiting. The general path is "one buy, two talk, three report, four review and five lawsuit".

　　Number of malicious complaints

　　In September this year, the symposium on professional claims held by China Market Supervision Newspaper revealed that in recent years, the number of malicious complaints and reports of "professional claims" initiated in the name of "counterfeiting" and "safeguarding rights" exceeded 1 million each year.

　　Governance means

　　Many parties have called for curbing the frequent occurrence of vicious claims management documents.

　　With the social harmfulness of occupational claims becoming increasingly prominent, the voice of curbing occupational claims is getting higher and higher. At the recent 2019 Internet Law Conference, the "Malicious Claims Industry Observation Report" was released. According to the Report, professional claims have affected businesses, platforms, regulatory authorities, judicial departments and other parties, undermined the market business environment, and encroached on the judicial law enforcement resources for consumers’ legitimate rights protection.

　　According to public information, nearly 40 NPC deputies have put forward suggestions to standardize occupational claims. For example, Chu Xiaoqin, a deputy to the National People’s Congress, put forward at the two sessions of the National People’s Congress in 2018 that the motive of "professional claims" is not to purify the market, but to use punitive damages to make profits for themselves or take the opportunity to extort money from merchants. Some behaviors seriously violate the principle of good faith, ignore judicial authority and waste judicial resources. Therefore, she suggested gradually curbing the profit-making counterfeiting of professional claims.

　　Since the beginning of this year, the central government’s governance documents on occupational claims have also been issued frequently. On May 20th, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the Opinions on Deepening Reform and Strengthening Food Safety, stating that "malicious reporting of illegal profits should be severely cracked down according to law".

　　On August 8th, the General Office of the State Council issued the Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Healthy Development of Platform Economy, demanding to effectively protect the legitimate rights and interests of participants in the platform economy and crack down on extortion in the name of "counterfeiting".

　　"Standardizing profitability according to law ‘ Counterfeiting ’ And claims. " On September 6th, the State Council issued the Guiding Opinions on Strengthening and Standardizing Post-event Supervision, which also made this clear.

　　In its reply to Li Changqing, a representative of the National People’s Congress, at the end of August this year, the General Administration of Market Supervision made it clear that occupational claims have deviated from the legislative intent of the civil punitive damages system stipulated by laws such as the Consumer Protection Law, and will cooperate with the Ministry of Justice to issue the Regulations on the Implementation of the Consumer Protection Law as soon as possible, so as to specify in detail that defects such as advertising, labeling and instructions that do not affect the quality of goods or services and will not mislead consumers are not fraudulent acts.

　　Xinhua News Agency, Washington, April 8 (Reporter Xu Jianmei, Deng Xianlai) On the 8th, US President Biden announced a series of administrative measures to strengthen gun control and reduce gun violence.

　　Biden made a speech in the White House Rose Garden that day, saying that gun violence in the United States is taking lives every day and leaving lasting scars on the community. "Gun violence is an epidemic in the United States and embarrasses the United States internationally."

　　These administrative measures include: the Ministry of Justice issued a proposed regulation to stop the proliferation of "ghost guns" within 30 days; Issue separate regulations on strengthening the control of pistol "stable bracket" within 60 days; Publish the "Red Flag" icon warning sample regulations that are convenient for States to refer to within 60 days; The Ministry of Justice will release the first report on gun smuggling in the United States in 21 years; Federal agencies will increase funding for community projects to reduce gun violence in cities by non-custodial means.

　　"Ghost gun" is a gun that is self-processed and assembled by purchasing parts, and there is no traceable commercial serial number; The "stable bracket" can turn the pistol into a more lethal and accurate rifle, and it is not subject to the legal constraints of supervising rifles; The "Red Flag" law allows local courts to prevent people who are suicidal or may pose a danger to others from obtaining guns for a period of time at the request of relatives and friends of the parties concerned or local law enforcement departments.

　　Biden said that he hopes to treat the parts of the "ghost gun" as guns in accordance with the gun management law, and that merchants will be equipped with serial numbers when selling parts and conduct background checks on buyers. He said that in some states that have enacted "Red Flag" laws, the number of people who commit suicide with guns has decreased.

　　Biden also nominated David chipman as the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives of the United States. chipman, who advocated gun control, has worked in the Bureau for 25 years.

　　According to American media reports, in 2020, nearly 20,000 people in the United States died of gun violence, and another 24,000 people committed suicide with guns. Gunmen have become worse this year, and major shootings have occurred in Georgia, Colorado and California recently.

　　On March 11th, the House of Representatives controlled by the Democratic Party of the United States passed two bills to strengthen the background investigation of gun purchase, but they were blocked in the Senate. Analysts believe that due to the long-term sharp opposition between American society and the democratic and Republican parties on the issue of gun control, it is uncertain whether the new gun control measures introduced by the Biden administration can be effectively implemented.