Famous for making fake
iPhones, Louis Vuitton bags and Rolex watches, China managed to surprise the
world once again. A Goldman Sachs (Shenzhen) Financial Leasing Company was
found operating in the country without any connection to the US investment
giant. "We don't have any
connection with the US Goldman Sachs, we just picked the name out, and it's not
intentionally the same,” a woman who answered the company's listed phone number
told AFP.
The
company uses the same Chinese characters, gao sheng, as the real Goldman Sachs,
and its English font is evocative of the US bank’s.
Bloomberg
made a
filing with the Shenzhen government that reveals the replica Goldman Sachs has
been operating since May 2013.
It’s
not the first case of setting up fake banks in China. A 39-year-old man in
eastern China’s Shandong Province was arrested this month after starting a fake
branch of the China Construction Bank with card readers, passbooks, teller
counter and convincing looking logos, the Xinhua news agency reported.
The bank was taking deposits but didn’t allow withdrawals.
"It's
notoriously difficult for an overseas claimant to persuade the Chinese courts
that there has been trademark infringement. There's still a practice of whoever
registers first wins," Paul Haswell, a Hong Kong-based partner at law firm
Pinsent Masons told Bloomberg.
Basketball
legend Michael Jordan lost a case in July against a local sportswear company
that used his name in Chinese.
In 2012, Apple paid US$60
million to Proview Technology (Shenzhen) that first registered the iPad
trademark in China in 2001.
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