Not sure why I'm being downvoted here. In the USA, deliberately using counterfeit trademarks is a crime, not just a tort (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trad

Not sure why I'm being downvoted here. In the USA, deliberately using counterfeit trademarks is a crime, not just a tort (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_Counterfeiting_Act_of_1984 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_Counterfeiting_Act_o... ). The standard for being found guilty of a crime is "beyond reasonable doubt", not just "preponderance of the evidence" as it would be for a tort. There is no way to electronically establish counterfeiting has occurred beyond reasonable doubt, because the completely legal scenario I described is electronically indistinguishable. It's not acceptable to go accusing people of crimes when you know you can't meet that standard of proof. EDIT: As a practical example, consider the case of I2C. This is a proprietary NXP protocol, and you have to pay to get slave addresses. So instead people use "Two Wire Interface", which is not I2C but is electronically indistinguishable. The only way to detect counterfeit use of I2C is looking at the packaging/documentation.