The Cisco brand signifies innovation and quality, and our products are in high demand throughout the world. While counterfeiters try to trade on our reputation, Cisco employs various anti-counterfeiting measures to protect our customers from the substantial risks of deploying counterfeit products in sophisticated networks. Today, we took another step to combat counterfeiters by filing cases in California and New Jersey against numerous sellers of counterfeit Cisco products. These sellers imported and sold numerous counterfeit products to unsuspecting customers who thought they were getting Cisco’s high-quality products.
Cisco’s customers rely on our products to run complex, critical and highly secured networks. But counterfeit Cisco products fail at much higher rates than genuine Cisco products, and those failures can cause privacy and security vulnerabilities, data loss, network downtime and substantial business interruption. Cisco’s ongoing anti-counterfeiting focus sends a strong message that Cisco will not tolerate the sale and distribution of counterfeit products.
The Cisco Brand Protection team actively monitors the marketplace to identify sellers of counterfeit products and takes steps to curb this ongoing problem. Our team works closely with Customs and Border Protection to stop counterfeits at the border, identify sellers of counterfeit to demand cessation of that activity, and pursue legal actions, including law enforcement referrals for criminal investigation of particularly egregious cases. Read about Operation Network Raider and some of the ways we help safeguard our partners.
Cisco recommends that customers buy Cisco products only from Authorized Cisco Partners or directly from Cisco in order to minimize the risk of purchasing counterfeit products. Customers who have purchased Cisco equipment from outside Cisco’s authorized channels and are concerned about the authenticity of those products should contact us at brandprotection@cisco.com.
We look forward to bringing these important cases to a successful conclusion and will keep you updated on our progress.
Bill, thanks for leading the legal effort against these bad actors. Hopefully these cases will make others think twice before they decide to traffic in counterfeit Cisco goods.
Thank you to you and your team for raising awareness on this issue and for protecting our partners and customers. I look forward to reading about the progress of these cases.