Chinese Authorities Close Down Two Fake Apple Shops

[Maura]

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[FONT=&quot]Following on from last week’s story about the fake Apple Store in Kunming City in China, Fortune’s Apple 2.0 blog reports today that two of the five fake stores in Kunming have been closed by Kunming officials, but not out of any concern about copyright infringement or piracy issues, but because they do not have official permits to run a business from the premises. The original store that was featured in the first blog post from BirdAbroad that caused all the worldwide interest has, however, not been closed down. Apparently it was selling only official Apple products, and has now applied for an official reselling license from Apple. According to Reuters, Chang Puyun, a spokesman from Kunming government’s business bureau, even went as far as to give the world’s media a little ticking off for making assumptions about the goods sold in the fake store:[/FONT]

[FONT="]“Media should not misunderstand the situation and jump to conclusions. Some overseas media has made it appear the stores sold fake Apple products,” Chang Puyun told Reuters. “China has taken great steps to enforce intellectual property rights and the stores weren’t selling fake products.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]However, Reuters says that Chinese officials are also looking into whether or not Apple’s store design and layout is protected by law in China.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Source: Apple 2.0 - Fortune Tech: Technology blogs, news and analysis from Fortune Magazine[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Chinese city orders two fake Apple Stores to close | Reuters[/FONT]

 

[iCrank]

after the story has been exposed I wouldn't be surprised.