Counterfeit is an offence, it can become a crime

<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/ueditor/php/upload/image/20220117/1642394452179700.png" title="1642394452179700.png" alt="4.png"/></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.wswbearings.com/products/catalogue.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 112, 192); text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 112, 192);"><strong><span style="color: rgb(0, 112, 192); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Bearings&nbsp;</span></strong></span></a><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">are at the heart of industry and, like many mass-produced components, they are continually subject to copying and&nbsp;counterfeiting. For several years now, we have observed increasingly sophisticated counterfeit techniques, making it virtually impossible for the untrained eye to distinguish fake parts. All sizes of faked bearings are appearing, particularly on the&nbsp;spare parts market, in countries where known cases used to be few and far between. All manufacturers are affected.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px 0px 0.5rem; padding: 0px; color: rgb(30, 30, 30); text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4; font-size: 1.065rem; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: justify;"><br/><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">What are the risks of counterfeit?</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">The issues involved in the fight against&nbsp;counterfeit&nbsp;are crucial, the prime one being&nbsp;safety: that of&nbsp;aircraft,&nbsp;car&nbsp;or&nbsp;train&nbsp;passengers, but also that of employees in a plant using faked bearings that make machines less precise, unreliable and prone to failure at any time.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br/>The&nbsp;financial implications&nbsp;arising from such failures or breakages and the related&nbsp;issues of reputation&nbsp;must also be considered.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px 0px 0.5rem; padding: 0px; color: rgb(30, 30, 30); text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4; font-size: 1.065rem; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: justify;"><br/><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">How to fight against counterfeits?</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">To fight this scourge, bearing manufacturers are conducting a fight on several fronts:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Close collaboration with customs:&nbsp;awareness-raising and training programmes are provided for customs officers to help them better identify OEM&nbsp;bearings&nbsp;by their packaging, packing methods and markings, as well as their official shipping documents, etc.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br/></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Raising the awareness of&nbsp;distributors&nbsp;and end users:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">communication campaigns (poster campaigns to inform customers about the dangers of counterfeiting, awareness-raising booklets for distributors);</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">briefings with well-known distributors to alert them and avoid&nbsp;them being victim of counterfeits</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">showcasing of official sources and distribution channels.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br/></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Markings and technological advances: marking of parts and packaging, labels that are changed on a regular basis, the use of holograms to make copies increasingly difficult, constant&nbsp;innovation&nbsp;in order to develop products with performance beyond the capabilities of the counterfeiters.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br/></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Collaborative work: all the world’s major&nbsp;bearing&nbsp;manufacturers belong to the World Bearing Association (WBA) which runs a great many awareness-raising and training campaigns in countries where there is a high risk of counterfeit products.</span></p><p><br/></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px 0px 0.5rem; padding: 0px; color: rgb(30, 30, 30); text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.4; font-size: 1.065rem; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Some key figures about counterfeit</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">3,500&nbsp;industrial accidents a year due to counterfeit products</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">4.5 billion euros in economic damage&nbsp;as a result of counterfeits within the industry every year</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">200,000 jobs destroyed&nbsp;throughout the world every year because of counterfeiting, including nearly 40,000 in France according to the OECD (April 2016)</span></p><p><br/></p>