【10.08.19 纽约时报】仿冒产业深入调查 － 中国的假运动鞋工厂
【中文标题】仿冒产业深入调查 － 中国的假运动鞋工厂【原文标题】Inside the Knockoff-Tennis-Shoe Factory
【登载媒体】纽约时报
【原文作者】NICHOLAS SCHMIDLE
【原文链接】http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magazine/22fake-t.html?pagewanted=1&ref=china
边缘：鞋帮上方边缘不均匀。
标志：仿造品的Nike标志更像一个手写的对勾，而不像一个流线型的运动轨迹。
针脚：鞋帮与鞋底之间的针脚更长，而且不均匀。
蚀刻：仿制品的型号数字制作得更加粗糙。
针脚：每个缝线的尺寸大小不一。
材质：与真货比较起来，仿制品的边缘参差不齐，原料也更厚。
鞋底：型号标志没有出现在鞋底侧面。
标志：纽百伦的标志缺少真品的细节和金属光泽。
网眼：仿制品的网眼比较小。
意大利的一位店主向中国莆田一家运动鞋厂下了3000双白色耐克灵感系列室内足球鞋的订单。当时是在2月，这位店主要得非常急。他和工厂经理林都没有被授权生产耐克的产品，他们没有任何设计图和操作指引可以参考。但是林根本不在意，他已经习惯了一切从零开始。一个星期之后，这位只愿透露姓氏的林先生收到了一双正品灵感系列球鞋。他把它拆解、研究其缝合方式和造型结构、自己画出设计图纸，并成功克隆了3000双。一个月之后，他把这些鞋运往意大利。林最近对我满怀信心地说：“卖完之后，他还会向我下更多订单。”
林的职业生涯绝大部分都是在运动鞋的制造行业中，大约5年前，他进入了仿冒品行业。林说：“我们视订单决定产品，有人想要耐克，我们就做耐克。”莆田，按照中国一位知识产权律师的话来讲，是仿冒运动鞋生产的“老巢”。它位于中国东南部省份福建，与台湾隔海相望。在80年代末期，各行业的跨国公司开始在福建、广东、浙江等沿海省份建立生产基地，相同的行业都会集中在一个城市或地区。莆田是运动鞋的生产集中地。90年代中期，一批新兴的工厂开始专门生产假货，他们复制耐克、阿迪达斯、彪马和锐步等品牌的真品。仿造者们通过商业间谍、贿赂正品工厂中的员工、盗窃样品或图纸等方式，以低廉的成本进入这个行业。据一位耐克莆田工厂的员工说，曾经有人把鞋子从工厂的围墙中扔出来。正品上市之前，商店中就会出现假货，这种现象并不少见。
林对我说：“现在已经没有办法再打入工厂内部了。”正品工厂大幅提高了安保措施：保安、摄像头和第二道围墙。“我们现在就是到商店里买一双正品鞋，拿回来复制。”仿冒品分为不同的质量等级，主要取决于目标市场。莆田出产的鞋主要瞄准出口市场，在鞋类制品和知识产权的领域中，莆田已经成为高端仿冒品的代名词。这里的鞋子制作得极为精密，很难与正品区分出来。
在上一个财政年度中，美国海关和边境保护部门查获了价值超过2.6亿美元的仿冒货物，内容包括仿冒女士保暖内衣、DVD、刹车片、电脑配件和婴儿配方奶粉。在最近4年中，仿冒鞋制品是海关查获最多的产品，去年占到了查获总量的40％（电子类商品在去年占据第二位，大约占查获总量的12％）。海关并未细分查获物品的品牌，但是对正品的需求比例应带和对仿冒品的需求比例一致，因此耐克被认为是被仿冒最多的品牌。一名耐克员工估计，市场上每三双耐克鞋中就有一双是仿冒品。耐克全球品牌法律顾问Peter Koehler说：“计算市场上的仿冒品数量是完全不可能的。”
这是一座乳白色、5层楼高的工厂，前面有一个褐色的大铁门。我在一个天气不错的夏天下午来这里拜访32岁的林。留着一撇小胡子、脸上堆满亲热笑容的林在工厂外等着我，他带我进入铁门。我们走上两层铝制的楼梯，进入生产车间，里面充斥着生产过程中的摩擦的嘶嘶声。几十名工人正在安装鞋舌头、在鞋模上刷胶、给半成品运动鞋穿鞋带。一个角落堆着耐克和阿迪达斯的鞋盒，另一个角落是爱世克斯的鞋盒。这一天，这个工厂生产出了数百双跑鞋。
大门旁边的墙上贴着一个招工启事，招聘全日制缝纫工。启事并未说明工厂从事的是非法业务，这在莆田是不言而喻的。管理一家仿冒鞋厂让林跻身于资产亿万的仿冒品制造、分拨、销售跨国企业行列中。当然，就像玻利维亚种植古柯碱和阿富汗种植鸦片的农民一样，林没有挣到大钱，行业利润大都落入网络中的进口和分销环节。例如，去年，FBI在纽约和新泽西逮捕了几个巴尔干人，原因是怀疑其参与“走私大量可卡因、海洛因、大麻、奥克西定、合成代谢类固醇，以及上百万粒摇头丸和仿冒运动鞋”。FBI亚非犯罪事业部主任Phillips把进口仿冒品称作是罪犯们的“智举”——高利、低代价。一名国际刑警组织的分析师说：“如果他们被抓到运输一箱仿冒运动鞋，他们会失去这些货物，在海关纪录上留下一份案底。但是如果被查到的是三公斤可卡因，他们会入狱三到六年。你也能区分孰轻孰重。”
2007年9月，纽约警方从布鲁克林的两家仓库中查获了291699双仿冒耐克鞋。这次晨间突袭行动是同时针对仿造集团打击行动的动作之一，涉及中国、纽约和至少其它6个美国州府。这次联合行动由移民和海关执法部、纽约警察局、尼亚加拉警察局联合发动，借助卧底探员和qie听器等方式揭露了一项阴谋。来自中国的仿冒耐克产品存放在布鲁克林，随后大部分通过UPS运输到布法罗、罗切斯特、匹兹堡、达拉斯、密尔沃基、芝加哥、纽瓦克、罗德岛和印第安纳波利斯等城市的商店中。一名参与行动的移民局探员Lev J. Kubiak说，整条街查获的商品价值（按正品价值计算）“超过3100万美元”。追踪这些运动鞋的来源十分困难。当我向一名移民局发言人询问鞋的始发地时，她在邮件中回复：“这些物品的进口文件中一般都是虚假的信息，来源可能是莆田附近。”
参观流水线之后，林和我走上另外一个楼梯，来到工厂的屋顶。一阵微风吹过工厂后面的一条小河，远处是正在施工的公寓楼，笼罩在脚手架和绿色的防护网中，旁边站着巨大的吊车。莆田，这座300万人口的次级省会城市正在以令人炫目的速度发展。从酒店的窗户中可以看到一群未封顶的公寓楼，高速似乎每天都在增加。
在位于顶层的林的办公室中，我们围坐在一张小桌子旁，桌子上有一个棋盘大小、用来泡茶的奇妙装置。林用一把小刷子把剩茶清理干净，泡上一壶绿茶，继续讲述年初与意大利人的那笔交易。他给我和我的翻译倒上一杯茶后，到楼下拿来三个鞋的样本，包括一只假耐克灵感系列，这是他的第一批产品，作为样本发给意大利买家确认是否符合要求。鞋的侧面有蓝色笔迹的日期和他的签名。当我把鞋拿在手里仔细观察时，发现鞋舌内的标签上写着“越南制造”。林说，这不过是个小把戏，“仿冒品分为不同的级别，有些质量低劣，跟正品没有一点相似的地方。但是还有一些质量非常好，与正品难以区分，唯一识别的方法是胶的气味。”他把鼻子埋在鞋里，吸入一口气。
国家知识产权协调中心是美国的反仿冒品总部，坐落在弗吉尼亚阿灵顿矮小的建筑群中，这里汇集了来自移民和海关执法部、海关和边防部、食品药品管理局、FBI、专利局、美国邮政局、国防犯罪调查部、海军犯罪调查部和一些其它政府机构的代表。留着短发、操一口田纳西口音的J. Scott Ballman是中心的代理负责人。Ballman自80年代早期进入海关以来，一直密切参与针对侵犯知识产权的执法工作（911事件之后，海关一分为二：海关总署和边境保护部负责处理查获违禁物品；移民和海关执法部负责处理调查事务）。他曾经参与海关第一例卧底调查知识产权案件，他的团队经过调查取证，1985年最终在迈阿密逮捕了一个组装仿制手表的团伙。他说：“大部分的仿制品都销往美国国外。”
1998年，国家安全理事会经过对知识产权犯罪造成的影响的研究，认为联邦执法缺少一致性。随之而来的一项行政命令勾画出国家知识产权协调中心的角色。两年后，一个临时机构开始在华盛顿运作，但是911之后，追击仿冒品不再是重点关注的问题。Ballman说：“资源和工作重心在一夜之间变化了。探员们被部署到各地，工作重点从知识产权转移到反恐和大规模杀伤性武器上。”
奥巴马政府让知识产权重新成为工作的重心，他在3月份的一次演讲中说：“我们伟大的一项财产是改革创新、心灵手巧、富有创造力的美国人民。但是，只有当我们的企业有能力让一部分人无法盗取我们的创意、无法用廉价的原料和劳动力进行复制的时候，才真正是我们的竞争优势。”为了实施他的知识产权战略，奥巴马任命了一名知识产权执法负责人，并要求移民和海关执法部负责提供知识产权协调中心的资金。
这样的努力会有所收获吗？“仅靠这些措施不会有太大的出路。”国际反仿冒同盟主席Bob Barchiesi在今年春季的一天，用绝望的口气这样对我说。他强调，只要有需求，就会有供给。他刚刚从中国回来，那里是美国海关和边境保护部在上一个财年查获的仿冒品中80％的来源地。Barchiesi有一天亲临一次查抄行动，中国执法部门没收仿冒牛仔裤，而工厂、员工和设备都丝毫未动。Barchiesi说这就是一个“宣传作秀”。
要求中国尊重知识产权已经不是新鲜事了。1796年，Gilbert Stuart完成了以雅典娜神庙为背景的乔治华盛顿画像——当然在今天，只花1美元就可以买到其仿制品——之后不久，来自费城的船长John Swords率队前往中国南方。在今天的广东省，Swords订购了100套未被授权的复制品，这些画像都被绘制在玻璃上（之前有两张复制品不知怎样已经被运到中国作为样本）。Stuart被Swords的行为激怒了，1801年，他在宾夕法尼亚的法庭上起诉Swords，最终胜诉。但是，损失已经无法挽回了。一个多世纪之后，《古风杂志》这样报道：“绘制在玻璃上的大量乔治华盛顿绘画作品正在摧毁这个国家。”
但是，中国的仿冒现象不仅仅是像莆田这样单纯地复制外国产品，很多中国的运动鞋品牌也是仿冒产物。Mark Cohen在2004年来到北京，成为美国专利局驻美国使馆的第一任长期知识产权代表（他同时成为商业知识产权委员会的美国商会的主席之一）。他说，国内对于保护知识产权问题的争论最早可以追溯到19世纪中期。19世纪50年代的太平天国运动其中一个倡议就是“起草鼓励中国人创新的专利法案”。一天早晨，我和他在北京一家高档咖啡馆喝咖啡的时候，Cohen批评了中国政府不作为的态度，他认为这是避重就轻的处事方式。他说：“人们来到中国这样的环境中，想当然地认为这么多仿冒行为一定是因为没有人在执法。但是中国却有众多的执法机构，有足够的知识产权官员，”——他估计至少有数十万人——“相当于一个欧洲小国的人口。”
数量当然不等同于效率。Baker & McKenzie事务所的知识产权律师Joe Simone说：“这是警方执法范围之内的事，但是（中国政府）没有投入足够的警力，99％的执法行动不过是官僚行为。”他质疑当前执法系统的效率。莆田的仿冒商林告诉我，当地执法机构曾经搜查他的工厂，迫使他在白天停止生产，但是夜间依然正常开工，生产进度没有受到任何影响。
北京的知识产权高层官员似乎不同意仿冒现状的成因。去年，国家知识产权居和国家版权局就“山寨”现象发生了一些争论。这个特殊的词语在当代用来形容你应当为之骄傲的仿冒产品，有山寨iPhone和山寨保时捷。
2009年2月，一名记者向国家知识产权局局长田力普发问，山寨是否是值得推崇的概念？田简要地回答：“我是一名知识产权工作人员，未经授权使用他人的知识产权是违法行为。”他还说，中国文化并不推崇模仿和剽窃他人的劳动成果。但是以一个月之后，国家版权局的柳斌杰把山寨和仿冒区分为不同的两个概念。柳说：“山寨展示了普通人民的创意文化，它符合市场需求，人们喜欢山寨产品。我们需要引导、规范山寨文化。”不久之后，临近香港的工业城市深圳市长敦促当地企业，不要理会高层关于仿冒品定义的争论，“别担心那些反对剽窃的争论声，专心做你们的生意。”
这种矛盾的政策环境引导、或许是激发了各种各样的公司反应。毫无疑问，就像华盛顿的雅典娜神庙画像一样，今天“大量的”假冒运动鞋正在“摧毁”中国、美国、意大利和整个世界。但是，我接触过的大型运动鞋公司没有一个敢于公开谈论他们产品被仿冒的问题。Peter Humphrey是北京一家风险咨询公司“ChinaWhys”的创始人，他认为这些公司还是远离这些话题比较好。原因在于这会“激怒中国当局”，或者“当众承认仿冒现象有些过于高调”。Humphrey说：“如果他们的言论被散布到消费者市场中，人们就会担心他们买到的鞋子到底是真的还是假的。”
仿冒产品是否触及了合法运作公司的底限？每双仿冒耐克和阿迪达斯的网球鞋都会滞销吗？一位匿名的运动鞋大公司高层员工认为，仿冒是日常商业行为中的一个简单现象，“这影响我们的业绩了吗？也许没有。这是否令人沮丧？……当然，但是我想我们可以把它看作是一种推崇和奉承。”
这也许还是某种形式的行业培训行为。莆田的林告诉我他的真正野心：“生产仿冒鞋仅是一个权宜之计，我们正在开发自己的品牌，长远的发展方向是创造自己的品牌和名声。”林的目标似乎与中国实际执行的仿冒政策是一致的：在法律层面给予禁止，但同时执行放任的商业发展政策，由此而掌握的技术最终会形成强大的合法企业。
莆田的仿冒运动鞋厂家完全公开运作。在互联网搜索引擎上搜索“莆田耐克”，会有数百个查询结果，直接带你进入莆田销售假冒运动鞋的网站中（莆田的假冒运动鞋业务已经变得如此知名，以至于网络交易平台Alibaba.com专门设置了一个网页，警告买家在与莆田的供应商交易时要极为谨慎）。McCarter & English事务所的知识产权律师Harley Lewin说：“制造和销售这些产品的人们不再对信息保密，尽管以前卖方不愿意透露自己的真实信息，但是现在找到他们易如反掌。”
莆田的学生街是一条双向车道车道的林荫道，两边林立的商店中全是仿冒运动鞋，我在这里花了一个下午观察他们的商品。就像其中的商品质量高低不同，铺面的装修也分为不同的档次。有一家商店模仿Urban Outfitters（译者注：美国户外服饰品牌）的风格——裸露的砖墙和管道、从假窗户中射进模拟的光线、低沉的电子背景音乐——但是与店铺美感比较起来，似乎大部分商店更加重视业务，很多铺面的金属卷帘门都抬起一半，表示他们正在营业。我弯腰走进一家商店，看到两边的墙上全是包在透明热塑薄膜中的运动鞋：Air Jordan、最新款的LeBron James、五趾运动鞋等等。就像进入了假冒的Foot Locker（译者注：世界上最大的体育运动用品网络零售商）。
我从架子上拿起一双Nike Free，在手中转了转、反复折叠鞋底、揪一揪线头、闻了闻胶的味道，每个新入行的鞋迷都有自己的一套测试方法（我实在没有闻出“劣质”胶的味道）。这双在学生街售价大约12美元的鞋，似乎和我妻子在美国花85美元买的那双没有任何区别。国家知识产权协调中心副主任Ballman说：“我不确定自己是否能立即识别出一双假鞋。”一个把大部分职业生涯都投入到知识产权执法工作中的人都识别不出区别，我就更不行了（Ballman曾经说假鞋有一股“浓烈”的胶味）。北京一个出售仿冒品的人对我说：“这是正品鞋，只不过商标是假的。”
“你是打算买还是卖？”一个留着刘海的30多岁女人在我观察Nike Free的时候走过来问。她的丈夫坐在后边，面对一个大尺寸的台式机显示器。他们的小女儿左在另外一台电脑前，戴着耳机玩电脑游戏。这个商店其实还是一个批发地。这个女人后来说，她和她的丈夫还开了一个小工厂，他们一直在试图把自己的运动鞋推向市场，同时也在寻找能把产品销售到西方的代理人。她说：“如果你批量订购，我可以给你一个折扣。”
我问他们如果订购2000双，可以多长时间交货。她说：“给我样本之后一个月。”她丈夫过来向我保证“鞋的质量绝对好，我们会使用和正品相同的原料，这些材料在莆田当地就有。”（然而林曾经和我说，使用相同的原料会让价格很快提高。）
我问：“我怎么让2000双仿冒运动鞋通过美国海关？”
他说：“鞋不会从莆田发运。”或者至少文件上不会这样注明。“我们通常通过香港取道美国。别担心，我们一直这样做。”
一个星期之后，我飞到香港与一名私家侦探Ted Kavowras会面。他开了一家侦查公司Panoramic Consulting，在中国和香港有30名雇员。（他还是中国和香港驻世界侦探协会的代表。）他的专长领域是调查仿冒品工厂和分销网络。一天晚上，我和他在他办公室附近的一家日本餐馆里吃烤章鱼肉串、喝可乐。他说：“7年前，从中国本地出口还是一件满复杂的事情，因为没有互联网，因此缺少了通向世界的窗口。大部分出口业务必须要通过国有运输公司来运作，相对比较集中。现在则是群雄割据的局面。”
Kavowras是个48岁、皮肤苍白、鸭梨体形、举止粗鲁的家伙。在日本餐厅分开之后，我们后来在一家高档的牛排餐厅又见过面。（他耸着肩，撅起嘴唇说：“什么？我来自布鲁克林。”）Kavowras在纽约长大，高中毕业后进入纽约警察局，三年后因身体残疾退休。后来做过“很多执法方面的工作”，比如保安，但他都认为这些工作没意思。他说：“身体不行了就是不行了。” Kavowras还在《纽约时报》工作过，5年后他辞职，来到亚洲。1994年，美国私家侦探给他提供了一份广州的工作。他说：“我身怀正确的手艺，在正确的时间出现在正确的地点。”5年后，Kavowras成立了Panoramic。
Kavowras估计他每年接手的案子有800宗，内容从运动鞋到手表和采矿工业泵。2002年，纽百伦雇用他打探一家工厂，厂主是纽百伦的原供应商，一位叫Horace Chang的台湾人。据媒体报道，Chang多少有些流氓习气。他曾经是纽百伦官方认可的运动鞋制造商和分销商，后来双方关系破裂，纽百伦终止了合同。但是Chang依然在继续生产纽百伦品牌的运动鞋，在没有被许可的情况下破坏公司注册商标。纽百伦请Kavowras打入Chang的工厂内部，并汇报情况。我问Kavowras，一个来自布鲁克林的前警察是如果在中国做卧底的？他说：“我的调查方法绝妙无比，就像一场梦。毒贩必须要交易毒品，仿冒商必须要销售货物。我出现在仿冒工厂里时，打扮得像个出席舞会的美女，也就是说我表现得像个可以把他们的货物出口的大买家。”Chang最终停止生产纽百伦的仿冒鞋。
如果说仿冒世界里有一个共性，那就是欺骗。Kavowras安静的办公楼顶层，走廊的尽头有一排文件柜，上面摆的是好莱坞化妆师们曾经设计过的经典傻瓜形象。Kavowras和他的员工以此来试验自己的伪装：帽子、太阳镜、胡须、假牙。Kavowras开玩笑说：“我是唯一一个在周末没有空闲时间的演员。”六七台传真机被编好程序，可以显示Kavowras和他的员工假装代表的各类海外公司的国家代码和电话号码。每个员工都有一个文件柜，里面是各种各样的名片，让他们可以扮演多重身份。Kavowras说：“谎话编得越大，就有越多人相信。”他甚至在香港租下4间办公室用来和“猎物”见面。
Kavowras穿过办公室来到一个架子旁边，上面堆满了隐藏有摄像头的钱包和背包。我问他经济衰退对侦探业务有没有影响。他说：“去年我们的业务的确有所下滑。”公司纷纷削减品牌保护预算，Kavowras的案子少了很多。“但是今年我们忙的要死，去年放任仿冒品自流的公司今年重新开始追查。你永远躲不开这些问题的。有人会说‘噢，这是中国的事，我们在中国没有业务。’但正是因为在中国，才会出现问题，整个世界都会被中国搁浅在沙滩上。”
他对仿冒产业的未来看法如何呢？
他说：“这是一场持久的战争。”
我问：“就像反毒品那样持久的战争吗？”
他说：“不太一样。” Kavowras戴上一副假牙笑着说：“战斗的性质相同，只是战场在不断变化。越来越多的仿冒产业在转移到越南和柬埔寨，当然，中国的问题依然严重。这将变成一个国际问题。”同样，这意味着越来越多的警察、侦探和金钱将被投入到追查任何人都无法分别的假运动鞋事业中。
原文：
PULL TAB The finish of the top edge is asymmetrical. LOGO The signature Nike logo on the counterfeit shoe is more like a check mark than a swoosh. STITCHING Each stitch where the upper meets the sole is longer and less uniform.
ETCHING The model number is rendered more crudely on the counterfeit. STITCHES The size of the individual stitches vary considerably. MATERIAL The edge has a jagged finish and the material is much thicker than the original.
SOLE A model identifier is missing from the side of the sole. LOGO The New Balance symbol lacks the detailing and metallic finish of the original. MESH The perforations on the counterfeit are smaller.
A shopkeeper in Italy placed an order with a Chinese sneaker factory in Putian for 3,000 pairs of white Nike Tiempo indoor soccer shoes. It was early February, and the shopkeeper wanted the Tiempos pronto. Neither he nor Lin, the factory manager, were authorized to make Nikes. They would have no blueprints or instructions to follow. But Lin didn’t mind. He was used to working from scratch. A week later, Lin, who asked that I only use his first name, received a pair of authentic Tiempos, took them apart, studied their stitching and molding, drew up his own design and oversaw the production of 3,000 Nike clones. A month later, he shipped the shoes to Italy. “He’ll order more when there’s none left,” Lin told me recently, with confidence.
Lin has spent most of his adult life making sneakers, though he only entered the counterfeit business about five years ago. “What we make depends on the order,” Lin said. “But if someone wants Nikes, we’ll make them Nikes.” Putian, a “nest” for counterfeit-sneaker manufacturing, as one China-based intellectual-property lawyer put it, is in the south eastern Chinese province of Fujian, just across the strait from Taiwan. In the late 1980s, multinational companies from all industries started outsourcing production to factories in the coastal provinces of Fujian, Guangdong and Zhejiang. Industries tended to cluster in specific cities and sub regions. For Putian, it was sneakers. By the mid-1990s, a new brand of factory, specializing in fakes, began copying authentic Nike, Adidas, Puma and Reebok shoes. Counterfeiters played a low-budget game of industrial espionage, bribing employees at the licensed factories to lift samples or copy blueprints. Shoes were even chucked over a factory wall, according to a worker at one of Nike’s Putian factories. It wasn’t unusual for counterfeit models to show up in stores before the real ones did.
“There’s no way to get inside anymore,” Lin told me, describing the enhanced security measures at the licensed factories: guards, cameras and secondary outer walls. “Now we just go to a shop that sells the real shoes, buy a pair from the store and duplicate them.” Counterfeits come in varying levels of quality depending on their intended market. Shoes from Putian are designed primarily for export, and in corporate-footwear and intellectual-property-rights circles, Putian has become synonymous with high-end fakes, shoes so sophisticated that it is difficult to distinguish the real ones from the counterfeits.
In the last fiscal year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized more than $260 million worth of counterfeit goods. The goods included counterfeit Snuggies, DVDs, brake pads, computer parts and baby formula. But for four years, counterfeit footwear has topped the seizure list of the customs service; in the last fiscal year it accounted for nearly 40 percent of total seizures. (Electronics made up the second-largest share in that year, with about 12 percent of the total.) The customs service doesn’t break down seizures by brand, but demand for the fake reflects demand for the real, and Nike is widely considered to be the most counterfeited brand. One Nike employee estimated that there was one fake Nike item for every two authentic ones. But Peter Koehler, Nike’s global counsel for brand and litigation, told me that “counting the number of counterfeits is frankly impossible.”
The factory is off-white, five stories tall and fronted by a brown metal gate. It was a seasonable summer afternoon when I visited. Lin is 32, with a wispy mustache and a disarming smirk. He met me outside the factory and took me through the gate. We scaled two flights of aluminum stairs and entered a production floor echoing with the grinding and hissing noises of industrial labor. A few dozen workers stuffed shoe tongues with padding, brushed glue onto foot molds and ran laces through nearly finished sneakers. Nike and Adidas boxes were stacked in one corner, a pile of Asics uppers in another. On this particular day, the factory was churning out hundreds of trail runners.
A help-wanted notice on the wall beside the gated entrance sought individuals with stitching skills for all shifts; the bulletin made no mention that the work was illegal. Such things are often just assumed in Putian. Managing a fake-shoe factory puts Lin in the middle of a multibillion-dollar transnational enterprise that produces, distributes and sells counterfeits. Of course, like coca farmers in Bolivia and opium croppers in Afghanistan, Lin doesn’t make the big money; that’s for the networks running importation and distribution. Last year, for example, the F.B.I. arrested several people of Balkan origin in New York and New Jersey for their suspected roles in “the importation of large amounts of cocaine, heroin, marijuana, oxycodone, anabolic steroids, over a million pills of Ecstasy and counterfeit sneakers.” Dean Phillips, the chief of the F.B.I.’s Asian/African Criminal Enterprise Unit, describes counterfeiting as a “smart play” for criminals. The profits are high while the penalties are low. An Interpol analyst added: “If they get caught with a container of counterfeit sneakers, they lose their goods and get a mark on their customs records. But if they get caught with three kilos of coke, they’re going down for four to six years. That’s why you diversify.”
In September 2007, police officers in New York City seized 291,699 pairs of fake Nikes from two warehouses in Brooklyn. The early- morning raids were part of a simultaneous crackdown on a counterfeiting ring with tentacles in China, New York and at least six other American states. Employing undercover agents and wiretapping, the joint operation — run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the New York State Police, the Niagara Falls Police Department and the New York Police Department — exposed a scheme in which counterfeit Nikes arrived from China, were stored in Brooklyn and then shipped, often via UPS, to stores in Buffalo, Rochester, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Milwaukee, Chicago, Newark, Pawtucket, R.I., and Indian apolis. Lev J. Kubiak, an immigration agent involved in the case, said the total street value of the seized goods (had they been legitimately trademarked) “turned out to be just over $31 million.” Establishing provenance on the sneakers proved difficult. “Naturally the importation docs were not truthful,” an immigration spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail message, when I asked her where the shoes originated. “But probably in or near Putian.”
After touring the assembly line, Lin and I walked up another flight of stairs to the roof of the factory. A mild breeze blew off the creek that snaked behind the building. Half-constructed high-rise apartments, ensconced in scaffolding and green mesh, stood beside towering cranes. The pace of development in Putian, a secondary provincial city with a population of about three million, was dizzying. A cluster of unfinished apartment buildings visible from my hotel window seemed to be a floor higher every morning.
We sat in Lin’s rooftop office around a small table topped with a chessboard-size tea-making contraption. Lin proceeded to sweep the excess water off the tea table with a paint brush and then make a pot of green tea while recounting the transaction with the Italian shopkeeper earlier this year. After pouring cups for my translator and me, Lin excused himself and ran downstairs. He returned with three samples, including a single fake Nike Tiempo, the first of the batch, which was sent to the Italian buyer to make sure it met his standards. Scribbled on the side of the shoe in navy blue pen was a date and the man’s signature. While looking the shoes over myself, I noticed the label on the inside of the tongue read “Made in Vietnam.” That was all part of the subterfuge, Lin said, adding that there are “different levels of counterfeit. Some are low quality and don’t look anything like the originals. But some are high quality and look just like the real ones. The only way to tell the difference between the real ones and ours is by the smell of the glue.” He took back the shoe, buried his nose in the footbed and inhaled.
National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center is the anticounterfeiting headquarters in the United States. Situated among short stacks of concrete office buildings in Arlington, Va., the center brings together representatives from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, the Food and Drug Administration, the F.B.I., the Patent and Trademark Office, the United States Postal Service, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and other government agencies. J. Scott Ballman, an immigration agent with short, sandy hair and a Tennessee accent, is the center’s deputy director. Since joining customs in the early 1980s, Ballman has tracked the evolution of law enforcement’s response to intellectual-property violators as closely as anyone. (Customs split after 9/11 into Customs and Border Protection, which handles interdiction, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which deals with investigations.) He worked on what he says was the first undercover intellectual-property case for the customs service when he and a team of agents investigated and ultimately arrested a group in Miami for assembling counterfeit watches in 1985. “Most production of this stuff has since been pushed out of the United States,” he told me.
In 1998, the National Security Council studied the impact of intellectual- property crimes and concluded that federal law-enforcement efforts lacked coordination. An executive order soon followed, sketching out the role of the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center. Two years later a makeshift office opened in Washington, but after 9/11, chasing counterfeit goods lost priority. Ballman said: “Resources and focus changed overnight. Agents were detailed elsewhere and moved away from thinking about I.P. to counterterrorism and weapons of mass destruction.”
The Obama administration has made intellectual property more of a focus. “Our single greatest asset is the innovation and the ingenuity and creativity of the American people,” President Obama said in a speech in March. “But it’s only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can’t just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor.” To implement his intellectual-property strategy, Obama appointed an intellectual-property-enforcement coordinator, while Immigration and Customs Enforcement invigorated the property-rights coordination center.
Can such efforts make a difference? “You’re not going to arrest your way out of this,” Bob Barchiesi, president of the International Anticounterfeiting Coalition, told me in a despairing tone this past spring. As long as there is a demand, he insisted, there will be supply. He had just returned from a trip to China, the point of origin for nearly 80 percent of all goods seized by Customs and Border Protection in the previous fiscal year. One day, Barchiesi observed a factory raid where counterfeit jeans were seized by the Chinese authorities. The factory, its employees and all its equipment remained in place. Barchiesi called the raid a “propaganda show.”
Efforts to have intellectual-property rights honored in China are not new. Soon after Gilbert Stuart completed his Athenaeum portrait of George Washington in 1796, the one that’s reproduced today on the front of every $1 bill, a Philadelphia ship captain named John Swords set sail for southeast China. Once in Canton, in modern-day Guangdong province, Swords ordered 100 unauthorized replicas of the Washington portrait, which were painted on glass. (Two replicas had somehow already made their way to China and served as the template.) Stuart was furious when he learned of Swords’s activities and, in 1801, he sued Swords in a Pennsylvania court and won. The damage was probably done, however. Even more than a century later, Antiques Magazine observed, “a good many portraits of George Washington painted on glass are knocking about the country.”
But China’s counterfeiting dynamic is more complicated than foreign goods being copied in places like Putian. Chinese sneaker brands, for instance, are also counterfeited. And the domestic debate about ensuring intellectual-property rights dates to at least the middle of the 19th century, said Mark Cohen, who moved to Beijing in 2004 to be the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s first permanent intellectual-property representative at the American Embassy. (He has since become co-chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce’s intellectual-property committee.) One initiative of the Taiping Rebellion during the 1850s, Cohen told me, was to “draft a patent law to encourage Chinese innovation.” Over a cappuccino one morning at an upscale cafe in Beijing, Cohen criticized the notion of Chinese government negligence, which he called overly simplistic. “People come to this environment with certain assumptions that all this counterfeiting must mean that there’s no one enforcing,” he said. “But there’s loads of people enforcing! There’s enough I.P. officials” — at least several hundred thousand by his estimate — “to make a small European country.”
Numbers don’t necessarily spell efficiency, of course. Joe Simone, an intellectual-property lawyer with Baker & McKenzie in China, said: “This is police work, but isn’t putting enough police on it. Ninety-nine percent of the enforcement work is nothing but bureaucrats.” He questioned whether the current enforcement system was effective. Lin, the counterfeiter from Putian, told me about instances in which local authorities had searched his factory or even forced him to close in daytime, leaving him to run the factory at night. But production always goes on.
Beijing’s top intellectual-property officials, meanwhile, seem to disagree over what even constitutes counterfeiting. Last year, a debate occurred between the heads of the State Intellectual Property Office and the National Copyright Administration. The dispute revolved around shanzhai, a term that translates literally into “mountain fortress”; in contemporary usage, it connotes counterfeiting that you should take pride in. There are shanzhai iPhones and shanzhai Porsches.
In February 2009, a reporter asked Tian Lipu, the commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office, whether shanzhai was something to be esteemed. “I am an intellectual-property-rights worker,” Tian curtly replied. “Using other people’s intellectual property without authorization is against the law.” Chinese culture, he added, was not about imitating and plagiarizing others. But one month later, Liu Binjie, from the National Copyright Administration, drew a distinction between shanzhai and counterfeiting. “Shanzhai shows the cultural creativity of the common people,” Liu said. “It fits a market need, and people like it. We have to guide shanzhai culture and regulate it.” Soon after that, the mayor of Shenzhen, an industrial city near Hong Kong, reportedly urged local businessmen to ignore lofty debates about what is and isn’t defined as counterfeiting and to “not worry about the problem of fighting against plagiarism” and “just focus on doing business.”
This contradictory political environment parallels — or perhaps fosters — a seemingly confused corporate response. There is no doubt that, as with Washington’s Athenaeum portrait, there are today a “good many” fake sneakers “knocking about” China, the United States, Italy and the rest of the world. But none of the major footwear companies I contacted ventured an estimate of the scale of their counterfeiting problems. For them, it’s something better not discussed. Peter Humphrey, the founder of a risk consultancy firm in Beijing called ChinaWhys, suggested this could be for one of two reasons: a wariness of “upsetting the Chinese authorities” or being “afraid to admit publicly too loud” that they have a counterfeiting problem. “Because when word gets around the consumer market,” Humphrey said, “then everyone starts wondering if their shoes are real or not.”
How do counterfeit products translate to the bottom line of the legitimate company? Is each fake Nike or Adidas tennis shoe a lost sale? A senior employee at a major athletic-footwear company, speaking on condition of anonymity, reflected on counterfeiting as a simple fact of industrial life: “Does it cut into our business? Probably not. Is it frustrating? . . . Of course. But we put it as a form of flattery, I guess.”
It could also be a form of industrial training. In Putian, Lin told me of his real ambitions. “Making counterfeit shoes is a transitional choice,” he said. “We are developing our own brand now. In the longer term we want to make all our own brands, to make our own reputation.” Lin’s goals seemed in line with China’s de facto counterfeiting policy: to discourage it as a matter of law, but also to hope, as a matter of laissez-faire industrial-development policy, that the skills being acquired will eventually result in strong legitimate businesses.
Putian’s counterfeit-sneaker industry operates in the open. Just type “Putian Nike” into any Internet search engine, and hundreds of results immediately turn up, directing you to Putian-based Web sites selling fake shoes. (Putian’s counterfeit-sneaker business has become so renowned that Alibaba.com, an online marketplace, offers a page warning buyers to exercise caution when dealing with suppliers from Putian.) “People who make the product and sell the product are no longer secret,” says Harley Lewin, an intellectual-property lawyer at the firm McCarter & English. “Where sellers in the past were unwilling to disclose who they were, these days it’s a piece of cake” to find them.
Student Street in downtown Putian is a leafy, two-lane road lined with stores stocked with nothing but fake tennis shoes. I spent an afternoon browsing their wares. Like the products inside, the stores varied in quality. One resembled an Urban Outfitters — exposed brick and ductwork, sunlight beaming through a windowed facade, down-tempo electronica playing in the background — but the majority of the stores appeared to value enterprise over aesthetics, with storefronts made of metal shutters left ajar to indicate they were open for business. I ducked into one and discovered a single room with two opposing walls covered in sneakers shrink-wrapped in clear plastic: Air Jordans, the latest LeBron James models, Vibram FiveFingers and more. It was like a Foot Locker for fakes.
I pulled a pair of black Nike Frees from the rack, spun them in my hands, folded the sole back and forth, tugged at the stitching and sniffed the glue; every budding aficionado has their tasting routine. (I never could detect the smell of “bad” glue.) The shoes, which cost about $12 at the Student Street shops, seemed indistinguishable from the pair my wife bought for $85 in the United States. “I don’t know if I could tell a shoe right off the bat,” Ballman, the deputy director of the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, told me. If someone who specialized in intellectual-property-rights enforcement most of his career wasn’t sure he could tell the difference, how could I? (Ballman said the key was that fake shoes have a “heavy” glue smell.) As one Chinese salesman selling counterfeits in Beijing told me: “The shoes are original. It’s just the brands that are fake.”
“Are you looking to buy or sell?” a tall, 30-something woman with bangs asked as I examined the Nike Frees. Her husband sat behind her, facing a large desktop-computer monitor. Their young daughter sat at another computer, wearing a headset and playing video games. The shop doubled as a wholesaler. The woman later confided that she and her husband ran a small factory as well as the store. They were on the lookout for ways to get their sneakers to market and for sales agents who could sell their shoes in the West. “We can give a discount if you order in bulk,” she said.
I asked how long it would take to make 2,000 pairs. “Once you send us the model, about a month,” she said. Her husband spoke up and assured me that the shoes “would be the highest quality,” adding, “we’ll use all the same materials. All the best materials are available in Putian.” (Lin, however, disputed that and said that using the same materials would quickly drive the price up.)
“How would I get 2,000 pairs of counterfeits past customs agents in the United States?” I asked.
“They won’t come from Putian,” he said. Or at least the documents wouldn’t indicate that. “We usually ship through Hong Kong on our way to America. Don’t worry. We do this all the time.”
A week later, I flew to Hong Kong to meet with a private detective named Ted Kavowras. Kavowras runs Panoramic Consulting, an investigative firm employing 30 people in China and Hong Kong. (He is also the China and Hong Kong ambassador for the World Association of Detectives.) His forte is investigating counterfeit factories and distribution networks. “Until seven years ago, to export from China was much more complex, because you didn’t have the Internet and didn’t have that window into the world,” he told me one evening over Diet Cokes and skewers of grilled octopus at a small Japanese restaurant near his office. “So most of the exports that came out of China had to go through these state-owned shipping companies. It was all pretty centralized. Now it’s pretty much a free-for-all.”
Kavowras is a pear-shaped 48-year-old with pasty skin and a brash demeanor. The night after we met for Japanese food, he showed up at a fancy steakhouse wearing a black velour Fila tracksuit. (“What? I’m from Brooklyn,” he said with a shoulder shrug and pursed lips.) Kavowras grew up in New York City and joined the New York Police Department soon after graduating from high school. Three years later he retired on disability. He ended up working “a lot of law-enforcement stuff,” including security- guard duties, but he found it unrewarding. “When you’re not the real thing, you’re not the real thing,” he said. Kavowras then worked in production with The New York Times but quit after five years and moved to Asia. In 1994, Pinkerton offered him a job in Guangzhou, China. “I was at the right place at the right time with the right skill set,” he said. Five years later, Kavowras formed Panoramic.
Kavowras estimates that he works about 800 cases a year, encompassing everything from sneakers to watches to industrial mining pumps. In 2002, New Balance hired him to nose around a factory run by one of its former licensees in China, a Taiwanese businessman named Horace Chang. According to press reports, Chang had more or less gone rogue. Though he had been previously contracted by New Balance to make and distribute sneakers, relations turned bad, and New Balance canceled the contract. But Chang continued making shoes that bore the New Balance trademark without permission. New Balance asked Kavowras to get inside Chang’s operation and report back. “I use a wonderful investigative methodology that works like a dream,” Kavowras said when I asked him how a former street cop from Brooklyn goes undercover in China. “Drug dealers have to deal drugs, and counterfeiters have to sell their goods. When I show up at a counterfeit factory, I look like a pretty girl on prom night. I look like a big buyer who they can export a lot of goods to.” Chang eventually quit making counterfeit New Balance shoes.
If there’s one commonality throughout the counterfeit world, it’s deception. Along the top of a file cabinet in Kavowras’s office, located at the end of a hallway on an upper floor of a quiet building, was a row of putty heads that a Hollywood makeup artist had designed so that Kavowras and his staff could experiment with disguises: hats, sunglasses, beards and mustaches, fake teeth. “I’m the only working actor who’s not waiting tables on the weekend,” Kavowras joked. A half-dozen fax machines were programmed to display the country codes and phone numbers of the overseas companies that Kavowras and his colleagues pretended to represent. Each employee kept a tray stacked with various business cards to corroborate their multiple identities. “The bigger the lie, the more they believe,” said Kavowras, who also rents four shell offices around Hong Kong where he meets “targets.”
Kavowras crossed the office to a shelf piled with purses and backpacks embedded with hidden cameras. I asked him how the recession had affected the detective business. “Business definitely slowed down last year,” he said. Corporate brand-protection budgets were slashed, and Kavowras’s caseload dropped. “But we’ve been twice as busy this year. Whatever companies avoided last year came back to haunt them this year. You can’t run away from these issues. Some people say, ‘Oh, it’s just China, we don’t really have a market in China.’ But if it’s in China, it’s going to get out. It’s going to wash up on beaches all over the world.”
Where did he see the counterfeit industry going next?
“It’s a constant battle,” he said.
“Like ‘the War on Drugs’-kind of constant battle?” I asked.
“That’s different,” he said. Kavowras popped in a set of fake teeth and smiled. “I see the battle staying the same, just the battleground changing. More and more industrial work is shifting to Vietnam. Cambodia too, though it’s still a bit messy there. It’s going to become more international.” And that, in all likelihood, will mean more agents, more detectives and more money spent to pursue fake sneakers that no one is quite sure they can identify. 有利益就有逐利者。
人心如此 一双鞋子在发展中国家代表鞋子，在发达国家就代表享受了，所以专利在发展中国家体现的是垄断，发达国家体现的是创意，环境不同含义就不同了，
而且山寨货通常是不挤占正品的市场，山寨满足的是虚荣，虽然正品有时也满足虚荣，但虚荣的付费是不同的，是明码标价，只是在使用时才发生了变化，
并没有人把山寨当做正品卖，消费者并没有傻到去地摊买耐克的程度，这也就是山寨存在合理的原因了，
节省了设计等环节成本，其实复制的只是设计，才有大量的廉价货满足众多穷人的需求，让穷国的人能享受到因发达国家的专利垄断而曾经的不能，这是中国对世界穷人的贡献，当然在发达国家眼里这是窃取了，
这也就是为什么中国低廉制造出现后，即便像不可改变的非洲也开始进步了，
西方对专利严密控制的时代，同等的资源非洲什么也换不到，
可惜中国一些蠢笨的主流经济学家也在跟着西方谴责山寨，只能说他们太蠢笨了， 回复 3# liuyu39
问题是，现在很多山寨货当正品卖，这就操蛋了。 这说明边际效用在递减，从普通消费开始转变为品质消费，中国贫富差距也很大，这就需要政策的灵活了，
所以说根本就没有什么美国和中国模式，只有因势利导的模式，执政水平比的是弹性，
持经达权! 唔，除非真是用于运动的运动鞋才买正品，平时当拖鞋穿的那种需要正品么?显然不需要，那种山寨货其实是最合适的，既新潮又便宜。质量问题？需要考虑吗？不需要，因为最多也就穿一两个季度，明年咱可以买双新款的，呵呵 有需求就有市场 我买的运动鞋应该基本都是山寨版的
不过也有道专卖店去买，那些应该不是山寨货 如果现在耐克等和山寨的性价比相差不是很悬殊，我相信大部分人会选择买正品。反观现在，山寨的质量虽然不如正品但也很接近。耐克的鞋动则几百上千，你让普通人怎么买的起。山寨的鞋价钱基本低于一百，耐克能把价格降到两百左右很多人会去买耐克的。但现在的差距要比这个大得多。想买正品的不会去地摊买，这个消费群体不会对正品市场产生吸引力，应为他们知道买的那个不是正品的。没有了山寨那些人也不会转而去买正品。如果那些牌子能少赚点暴利，多给些实惠，会比光喊盗版强得多。一双鞋子的真实价格那些鞋厂都有数，盗版的厂有些之前就是给耐克代工的厂，耐克就是贴一个牌子。他们不会印上耐克的牌子，反而会把牌子卸了。那是没有牌子的正品，但其价格和正品的差距是巨大的。一个牌子对于穷人来说，比不上质量有吸引力。 产权、专利、版权这些都是用来保护原创者和品牌拥有者的工具！
音响、软件、硬件、服装等无数品牌厂商拥有忠实消费者和占据市场份额的同时获得了巨额的利润！
我们对品牌产品既爱之也憎之，当品牌产品背后的秘密被揭穿以后，其实部分人会选择低价的仿冒品！
比如汽车轮胎、高档音响、盗版软件、仿冒软件、仿冒硬件、仿冒服装、盗版影音.........华为和比亚迪就是从山寨模仿到自创技术的，中国的高铁技术似乎也是这样一条路，虽然官方口号是从消化吸收到自主创新！
不过，回想60多年来的中国，如果要像西方一样实行商业化，如果当年袁隆平把杂交水稻技术商业化，那么其品牌和价值远超过微软公司！本着共享人类文明成果的理念，数千年来中国人向世界无偿提供了许多技术和产品！ 貌似有的假货也要比正品结实~~~~
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