The leading kiwifruit marketer in the world, Zespri scored a victory in its defense of the firm’s intellectual property rights in China, after a Shanghai court recently handed three infringers prison sentences.

On July 22, the court sentenced three individuals to three years and nine months in prison for violating Zespri's IP and fined them CNY550,000 (USD76,830) each, Yicai Global reports.

The accused bought locally grown kiwifruit from farmers in Pujiang county, Sichuan province, who had Zespri’s registered trademark labels and packaging counterfeited. They then sold the newly labeled and packaged fruit through their online stores.

They sold 650,000 to 850,000 pieces of kiwifruit this way, raking in about CNY3.2 million (USD447,000).

Micheal Jiang, president of Zespri China said the company is satisfied with the court's ruling.

“This verdict sends a strong message of zero tolerance for illegal activities involving counterfeit use of Zespri trademarks and intellectual property, as well as for illegal actions that harm Chinese consumers' interests,” Jiang said in comments posted on the unit’s website on August 14.

Ivan Kinsella, vice president of public affairs of Zespri China, had told Yicai Global in July that the company has not authorized any growers in China to grow any of its varieties. However, the issue is big as based on Zespri’s assessment, the unauthorized planting area of its SunGold kiwifruit in China is about 8,387 hectares, with production this year comparable to the whole of the firm’s exports to China.

We are focussed on the criminal counterfeiting of our fruit using fake labels and packaging and fake authorization letters to list the products on their stores on e-commerce platforms,” Kinsella said.

Currently, Zespri works with about 1,500 growers in countries such as Italy, South Korea, Japan, and France to grow the fruit, in addition to 2,800 in New Zealand.

Last year, the company's global sales rose 2% to NZD3.99 billion (USD2.4 billion) with China accounting for almost a third of the company’s global market. 

Despite imports of kiwifruit to China, the country is also a big producer of its own varieties, and Kinsella says that they welcome it, as they will continue to improve the local varieties and this will help build the industry and expand the fruit bowl to include kiwifruit.

“New Zealand, as the key producer in the southern hemisphere, will always be complementary to that,” he added. 

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