Calif. Man Sentenced to Prison for Importing, Selling DVDs w/ False Dolby Trademarks
A California man was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison for trafficking in more than 30,000 DVDs bearing the counterfeit trademarks of Dolby Laboratory Licensing Corp., a company responsible for sound quality in many theatrical movies and DVD releases, said Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Jackie Weisheng Chen, 48, will begin serving his prison term by Jan. 4, 2013.
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Chen was the owner of Temia Media, a retail store in Monterey Park, Calif. The store sold counterfeit movies from China, some of which were compilation disks featuring Chinese and American-made movies with actors such as Jet Li and Jackie Chan, ICE said.
The investigation in this case began two years ago when CBP seized three shipments containing nearly 5,000 DVDs with counterfeit Dolby trademarks, ICE said. After the third shipment was seized and two previous notices by CBP had failed to stop the unlawful conduct, ICE obtained a search warrant for Temia Media, it said. During the search in January 2011, special agents seized nearly 25,000 DVDs with counterfeit Dolby trademarks. At that time, the special agent explained to Chen and an employee that the DVDs had counterfeit Dolby trademarks, ICE said.
Despite being warned about the counterfeit Dolby trademarks, Chen and the employee re-stocked their shelves and continued to sell the same DVDs with the same counterfeit Dolby trademarks, ICE said. In response, agents again searched the store in May 2011 and seized an additional 3,000 DVDs with counterfeit Dolby trademarks, it said. Chen and his co-conspirator were then arrested and charged. The employee was convicted in January and sentenced in late April to probation.