At first it seemed to be nothing more than a routine, if damaging, case of counterfeiting in a country where faking it has become an industry. Reports filtering back to the Tokyo headquarters of the Japanese electronics giant NEC in mid-2004 alerted managers that pirated keyboards and recordable CD and DVD discs bearing the company's brand were on sale in retail outlets in Beijing and Hong Kong.
Like hundreds, if not thousands, of manufacturers now locked in a war of attrition with intellectual property thieves in China, the company hired an investigator to track down the pirates. After two years and thousands of hours of investigation in conjunction with law enforcement agencies in China, Taiwan and Japan, the company said it had uncovered something far more ambitious than clandestine workshops turning out inferior copies of NEC products. The pirates were faking the entire company.