Sri Lanka police arrest counterfeiters, says clothing brand

May 03, 2010 (LBO) - Sri Lankan police have arrested several people for intellectual property rights violation after a raid on a factory making fake designs of the Odel fashion brand, the company said in a statement.



Odel runs a popular upmarket department store in Sri Lanka's capital Colombo and has begun setting up branches.




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Odel said its designs have been registered in Sri Lanka as trademarks and are legally the firm's exclusive property.

"However, many of these protected designs and artworks have been subjected to the ever growing piracy of intellectual property," Odel said in the statement.

After months of planning and investigations, a raid was conducted at a storage point in the Colombo suburb of Mount Lavinia which later led police to Maharagama, another suburb, where the counterfeiters operated a factory to print the designs.

"The raid resulted in the seizure of fabric samples, transparencies and printing screens of several Odel artworks and designs."

The raids were done by the police Colombo Crimes Division after Odel complained that large stocks of counterfeit Odel branded garments were being sold illegally.