Cisco files legal challenge against counterfeiters

Networking specialist Cisco has filed lawsuits in California and New Jersey against numerous companies and individuals it accuses of selling counterfeit versions of its products.

 The sellers “imported and sold numerous counterfeit products to unsuspecting customers who thought they were getting Cisco’s high-quality products” says the company’s director of litigation Bill Friedman.

The counterfeited products included a range of networking equipment including routers, switches, transceivers and network cards and were discovered by Cisco investigators making test purchases, with some of the sellers operating on the Amazon marketplace.

“Cisco’s customers rely on our products to run complex, critical and highly secured networks,” said in a blog post. “But counterfeit Cisco products fail at much higher rates than genuine Cisco products, and those failures can cause privacy and security vulnerabilities, data loss, network downtime and substantial business interruption.”

The lawsuits cite a number of defendants, including New Jersey companies Umit International Trading, Beyin Information Technology, Bryant Information Technology, Tech Data Reseller Ltd and Ncom Ltd, as well as Californian firm Beccela, OD Networks of Maryland and New York corporation ServerSupply.com.

Cisco says its brand protection team actively monitors the marketplace to identify sellers of counterfeit products and takes steps to curb their activity, and also works closely with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to stop counterfeits at the border, identify sellers of counterfeit to demand cessation of that activity, and pursue legal action.

It recommends that customers buy Cisco products only from authorized partners or directly from Cisco in order to minimize the risk of purchasing counterfeits.