Sign in / up

back to article Dealer bosses jailed for flogging fake Cisco kit

The bosses of US reseller Direct Deals has been sent down for touting fake Cisco gear imported from the Far East. According to reports stateside, Timothy Weatherly, 29, was sentenced to 27 months in a federal penitentiary for conspiring to import goods through false statements. White label equipment was shipped from China, …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections
This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Timo

    There are ways to fix this, if they want to fix it.

    Cisco could kill the counterfeit market for their hardware if they dropped the prices of the boards. They'd then need to move toward a software business and/or use licensing to enable the hardware. Imagine if they were to get most of their revenue from "software licenses", they wouldn't even care if you bought your cards from somewhere else - counterfeit or second-hand, as you'd have to pay them to get them unlocked in the cage.

    0 2
    1. Chris J
      Reply Icon

      The trouble is that software is even easier to pirate than hardware.

      0 0
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Counterfeiting does not significantly affect their business. yes they may loose a few hundred million in sales annually but for a company with revenue in the billions this is not significant. It also helps them in that lots of people will not buy on the secondary market in fear of being sold fake.

      Your comment that they should reduce their prices does not make any sense either. In that case why not just give it away for free.. problem solved.

      0 0
  2. Jess--

    the real question is whether these were real "fakes" or had actually come off the same production line as the real ones.

    I have seen various bits of kit that were supposedly fake but when you examined them they were identical in every respect to the real thing (right down to the marks left by a badly adjusted machine soldering down the chips) the only thing that gave the equipment I was looking at away was a badly printed label on the back.

    0 0
    1. Captain Scarlet
      Reply Icon

      Good point

      As companies often use specialists to produce their designs I can't see how they would stop copying or some white labelled goods being produced. Although if they are only one of a few clients it could affect the manufacturer a lot worse when found out.

      0 0
  3. David Kelly 2

    R&D?

    Sure, Cisco could drop their prices and continue production of existing hardware at Asian-competitive prices but then how could they afford to develop new generation hardware and software?

    Today's prices reflect the cost of development of the hardware, cover the losses for unsuccessful products, and finance future products which do not exist yet and will never exist if not developed.

    0 0
This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like