Recently, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate released the “Model Cases of Crimes Endangering Food and Drug Safety” .The case in which Lusheng Law Firm represented a well-known multinational health supplement company in handling a criminal matter involving multiple persons manufacturing and selling counterfeit and substandard products bearing counterfeit registered trademarks was honorably selected.
Case Handled by Lusheng
Representation of a well-known multinational health supplement company in a case involving multiple persons manufacturing and selling counterfeit and substandard products bearing counterfeit registered trademarks
Brief Case Summary
The right holder is a well-known multinational health supplement company. Since 2023, the defendant He, together with Guo, formed a criminal gang spanning multiple regions. Through the procurement of raw materials, commissioning of imitation production, filling and labeling, and online sales, they manufactured and sold on a large scale various counterfeit health supplements, including brands owned by the right holder, and sold them nationwide via e-commerce platforms. Among them, defendants Pang and Su were specifically responsible for key stages such as filling semi-finished products, labeling, and coding. By the time the case was uncovered, He and others had manufactured and sold more than 120,000 bottles of substandard health food, with sales exceeding RMB 8 million.
In September 2024, the Shanghai Railway Transport People’s Procuratorate instituted a public prosecution against defendants He and Guo for the crime of manufacturing and selling substandard products, and against defendants Pang and Su for the crime of counterfeiting registered trademarks, and simultaneously filed an incidental civil public interest action. In June 2025, the Shanghai Railway Transport Court sentenced defendant He to fifteen years’ fixed-term imprisonment and a fine of RMB 4 million for the crime of manufacturing and selling substandard products; and sentenced defendant Guo to eight years and six months’ fixed-term imprisonment and a fine of RMB 800,000. For the crime of counterfeiting registered trademarks, defendant Pang was sentenced to four years and six months’ fixed-term imprisonment and a fine of RMB 300,000; and defendant Su was sentenced to one year and four months’ fixed-term imprisonment and a fine of RMB 10,000. The judgment ordered all defendants to make a public apology to the general public, issue food risk warnings, and bear the costs of harmless disposal. After the first-instance judgment was pronounced, none of the defendants appealed, and the judgment has become legally effective.
Lusheng Law Firm represented the right holder, assisting the law enforcement and judicial authorities in the prosecution of the criminal suspects and in the determination of conviction and sentencing.
Typical Significance
I. Achieving precise, full-chain crackdown and tiered handling of counterfeiting and sale of counterfeit products in the health supplement sector
The criminal chain in this case was long, with numerous links and many persons involved, covering core raw material supply, finished packaging material production, filling of counterfeit and substandard products, warehousing, shipping, and other stages of production and sales, and was characterized by a wide distribution of personnel scattered across various industries. The procuratorial organ and public security organ worked in close coordination, digging deeply from the downstream sales end to the upstream production source, comprehensively collecting key evidence, and thereby achieving full-chain destruction of the criminal network.
II. Promoting refined determination by judicial organs of the division of labor and responsibility within the criminal gang
In this case, the counterfeiting gang was tightly organized, with numerous stages from raw material procurement and imitation production to filling and labeling and online sales. With respect to key stages directly involving the commission of acts of counterfeiting registered trademarks, such as filling and labeling, for which Pang, Su and others were specifically responsible, the judicial organs, based on the relevant evidence, accurately determined that they constituted the crime of counterfeiting registered trademarks. This refined distinction based on the nature of the conduct precisely pursued the legal liability of infringers at each stage and provided an effective model for combating organized trademark infringement crimes.
III. Professional legal support facilitating full-chain crackdown on infringement and effective relief of rights
In the face of challenges such as the criminal gang’s destruction of electronic evidence and difficulties in determining the amount of the crime, the case-handling authorities adopted a multi-dimensional approach to trace the source of infringement, lock in the criminal network, and accurately calculate the scale of infringement. As a result, the case ultimately not only achieved criminal sanctions against the principal infringers, but also, through the incidental civil public interest action and by promoting platform governance, required the infringers to bear responsibilities such as making public apologies and paying disposal costs, and led to the removal of the infringing products from shelves and the closure of the relevant online stores, thereby realizing a three-dimensional crackdown on the infringing acts from the criminal, civil, and social governance dimensions and comprehensively safeguarding the rights and interests of the right holder.
Lusheng Case-handling Team
FENG Guimei
Senior Lawyer, Lusheng Law Firm
Email: hfeng@lushenglawyers.com
XU Yaxin
Paralegal, Lusheng Law Firm
Email: ixu2@lushenglawyers.com
