Swedish court rules for criminal conviction in SKF counterfeit court case.
A Swedish court has sentenced one person to a one-year jail term and a five-year ban from trade, and awarded damages to SKF, after finding him guilty of violation of Swedish trademark law in relation to the SKF trademark. The court found that he intentionally purchased counterfeit SKF products. The products were thereafter sold with a high profit margin to unknowing customers.
The criminal and civil court case was the result of a police raid in March 2010 of stores in Stockholm and Avesta (located in the central parts of Sweden) where the police found thousands of counterfeit SKF products. SKF cooperated with the police in the identification of the counterfeit bearings.
Counterfeit SKF products are non-SKF products illegally marked with the SKF trademark and packed in SKF-like packaging. Counterfeit industrial products like bearings can considerably reduce the service life of machinery and in the worst case endanger human lives. SKF is actively cooperating with law enforcement authorities around the world to facilitate legal measures against those involved in the trade of SKF counterfeit products.
SKF is a leading global supplier of bearings, seals, mechatronics, lubrication systems, and services which include technical support, maintenance and reliability services, engineering consulting and training. SKF is represented in more than 130 countries and has around 15,000 distributor locations worldwide.