No countryside comfort zone for lookalike goods

A RECENT MEDIA investigation found that many products that carry similar names with famous brands are openly on sale in certain rural supermarkets. ThePaper.cn comments:

You might be familiar with Oreo biscuits, but if you visit certain groceries and supermarkets in rural regions, you might see biscuits with brands like Orao and Oero, which look like the popular biscuits but actually have nothing to do with them at all.

These are what are called lookalike goods. Carrying a name similar to a famous brand and similar packaging, they are aimed at misleading the consumer into mistaking them for the famous brands and buying them.

Some defend the lookalike goods by saying they suit the rural markets because of their lower prices. But that defense misses the point: Such products violate the legal rights of famous brands, as well as the right to know of consumers.

Authorities have been striking at lookalike goods for over 10 years and they have almost totally disappeared from urban supermarkets. However, in some rural regions where law enforcement is not so strict, consumers still fall victim to these lookalike goods.

The root of the problem lies in lax supervision. While market regulators perform their roles well in cities, their counterparts often fail to do their jobs well in rural regions. Besides, with the fast pace of urbanization, the majority of rural residents are seniors now, who might not be so able to distinguish the true goods from the lookalike ones.

It is time to end this situation by squeezing the space for knock-off goods. A unified urban and rural market management system needs to be established that equips rural areas with appropriate market supervision resources, so that the production and sales system of counterfeit and shoddy products can be eliminated at the source.