IF employees of Italian luxury brand Valentino visit China, they may be surprised to find there are already many "V" logos on display in small stores and markets. Each "Valentino" T-shirt may cost as little as 50 yuan (US$6).

Rio Xie, a local woman, said she frequently received advertisements about luxury brand sales. The latest one, received together with a newspaper, promoted Chongqing Valentino Garment Co Ltd who sell a formal suit from 398-695 yuan (US$48-US$85). In addition, anyone buying a suit receives a free hi-fi system and camera.

According to the advertisement, the brand owner was the Italian company Valentino.

"Who believes such advertisements?" Xie said. "I have seen various 'Valentino' items sold in small stores for very low prices, it is not very convincing."

According to Bao Mingxin, a professor at Donghua University, there are at least 200 companies copying Valentino items around the country.

Valentino is a common family name in Italy. In Italy, there are several fashion brands such as Giovanni Valentino, Mario Valentino and Valentino Coupeau. These various "Valentinos" also add to the opportunities for copycats.

Actually, Valentino is not the only namebrand to suffer from such depredations.

During the well-know fashion designer Giorgio Armani's trip to Shanghai last month, he also mentioned the copycat problem.

"Fake fashion products are not only a problem for Armani in China, most brands face similar difficulties. In Asia, the problem is especially serious," said a reporter from the Philippines.

The city's top 10 brand piracy cases in 2003, as declared by the Shanghai Industrial and Commercial Bureau, also list Adidas, Playboy and LV are as victims.

Adidas's sports shoes were copied by a local company in Shanghai. A total of 36,660 fake Adidas shoes marked with company's famous clover logo were confiscated.

Another copycat target was Playboy. The copycat sold shirts branded "Peonyboy" which looked very similar to Playboy. They earned illegal income of over 280,400 yuan (US$33,900) from the sales.

Brands fight back

To resist the copycats, enterprises have tried various things. The French brand Montagut set up a complicated system to fight fakes.

Montagut was one of the first batch of international brands to enter the domestic market, arriving in the 1980s. To most local people, it introduced the first idea of namebrands and fashion. To own a piece of clothing bearing the Montagut flower logo was the dream of most young people in the late 1980s. Thus, the copycats pounced.

For years, Montagut Far East Ltd has persisted in anti-counterfeit actions. In 2003, the company's battle against fakes took it to 11 provinces and autonomous regions, according to sources with the company.

In addition, the company also produced a complicated series of innovations to help consumers recognize the difference between fakes and genuine items. Each Montagut fil-lumiere T-shirt has a certificate and a special code.

Consumers can also figure out which items are real by counting the number of stitches at the shoulder and the bottom of the garment.

One insider said the reason for the explosion of counterfeiting was the hole still existing in the law.

Counterfeit goods sellers can use a trademark during the period when the application is being processed. Raising legal objections to a trademark violation can take 18 months of investigation, so copycats have plenty of time to take advantage of the time gap.

Laws needed

Second, the Trademark Law and the Entrepreneur Registration Administrative Regulation are inconsistent in certain respects, so it can be difficult to properly navigate between them.

"To complete the legal system is the key to tackling the problem," said Xu Lanbo, an expert in Consumer Law.

But Giorgio Armani argued the only way to defeat the plague of fake brands was for China to establish its own namebrands. Other experts have echoed this opinion.

Lionel Roudaut, professor with the Shanghai University Paris International Institute of Fashion and Arts, said during an interview with the Xinmin Evening News that an investigation at the Shanghai Xiangyang Lu Market proved it was a big market for fake namebrands.

"I found the fakes were very similar to the real ones," he told the local media. "It means Chinese people have the ability to produce quality products. If copycats dedicated these skills to developing their own designs, China's fashion industry would see a big improvement sooner or later."