Vasudevan LK, general manager of Epson India, at the Labelexpo show.
To curb the sale of counterfeit ink bottles and ribbon cartridges, and to protect the rights of its customers, Epson’s vigilance team and local police jointly conducted a series of raids on sellers in Lucknow, Mumbai, and New Delhi in October and November 2022.
The sellers who traded counterfeit Epson ink bottles and ribbon cartridges were arrested and charged under relevant laws under counterfeiting and violating intellectual property rights and remanded in judicial custody.
The joint raids were conducted in collaboration with the Lucknow Police, Mumbai Police, and Delhi Police. Among the products seized during the raids were finished and unfinished Ink bottles, cartridges, packaging material, and numerous sets of labels and holograms.
About 603 ink bottles and 510 ribbon cartridges were seized along with other printing material to manufacture counterfeit Epson ink bottles.
A spokesperson at Epson India, said, “The collaboration between Epson and the local police to stop the sale of counterfeit products reflects our commitment to rooting out this unethical business practice. We will continue to protect our intellectual property rights from those attempting to misuse our patented technology and trademarks.”
Epson regularly conducts raids to curb counterfeit sales. Non-genuine Inks can impair the performance and reliability of Epson products and the use of such counterfeit products invalidate the manufacturer’s warranty, the company said.
Epson is a global provider of home and office printing, commercial and industrial printing, manufacturing, and visual and lifestyle solutions.
2023 promises an interesting ride for print in India
Indian Printer and Publisher founded in 1979 is the oldest B2B trade publication in the multi-platform and
multi-channel IPPGroup. While the print and packaging industries have been resilient in the past 33 months since the pandemic lockdown of 25 March 2020, the commercial printing and newspaper industries have yet to recover their pre-Covid trajectory.
The fragmented commercial printing industry faces substantial challenges as does the newspaper industry.
While digital short-run printing and the signage industry seem to be recovering a bit faster, ultimately
their growth will also be moderated by the progress of the overall economy. On the other hand book
printing exports are doing well but they too face several supply-chain and logistics challenges.
The price of publication papers including newsprint has been high in the past year while availability is diminished by several mills shutting down their publication paper and newsprint machines in the past four years. Indian paper mills are also exporting many types of paper and have raised prices for Indian printers. To some extent, this has helped in the recovery of the digital printing industry with its on-demand short-run and low-wastage paradigm.
Ultimately digital print and other digital channels will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future. For instance, there is no alternative to a rise in textbook consumption but this segment will only reach normality in the next financial year beginning on 1 April 2023.
Thus while the new normal is a moving target and many commercial printers look to diversification, we believe that our target audiences may shift and change. Like them, we will also have to adapt with agility to keep up with their business and technical information needs.
Our 2023 media kit is ready, and it is the right time to take stock and reconnect with your potential markets and customers. Print is the glue for the growth of liberal education, new industry, and an emerging economy. We seek your participation in what promises to be an interesting ride.
