> They insisted it was legal because they weren't distributing, which is nonsense. There is some actual truth in this of which I can only explain anecdotally,

> They insisted it was legal because they weren't distributing, which is nonsense. There is some actual truth in this of which I can only explain anecdotally, and am slightly wary of posting this story as last time I did on HN someone personally attacked me as being stupid, but never explained how I was wrong. I've even searched for the truth on the matter, but as I'm not a lawyer I've only found explanations of the grey area that supports both arguments. Anyways, before I became a full time software developer I actually was a watchmaker, trained by a Swiss organization in partnership with a few major Swiss watch manufacturer companies. One of those companies is probably the most well known luxury watch brand in the world, of which they invited our class to their repair facility in Midtown Manhattan. The person that walked us through the facility was the president of after sales service himself. Upon visiting the area where they receive watches for repair, he remarked on how many imitation watches they receive per day (which is quite a bit more than I would have guessed). When asked on what they do with them, he said they usually just send them back to the owner with a letter explaining the watch. But, globally they have a goal to determine origins and production facilities abroad that do make their living off of manufacturing counterfeit goods in order to shut them down. Most counterfeit watches come from very few factories, so when they do receive an imitation for service, they check certain manufacturing marks which easily categorized them into groups they have already seen. (As an aside, this company engraves the word "Switzerland" inside the caseback, where the vast majority of imitations reproduce this word with "Shitinrhand"). If they come across an imitation that is unique, or instead of being produced as an imitation, it is produced to be a "genuine replica" to be sold as original, they try to keep the watch. This is where the story gets controversial. Even though the imitation infringes on both copyright and trademarks, they can't, by US Law, confiscate the watch flat out by refusing to return the watch to it's owner as that is theft. They first have to offer to buy the watch from the owner, and if the owner agrees to sell the watch (usually for a large sum), they can then refuse payment and keep the watch, as the loop hole is that the infringement is the transfer or sale of counterfeit goods, not the possession. I'd also like to debunk or validate this argument, however until someone provides me with case stories or cites laws, I'll go ahead and trust the president of service at a multi-billion dollar company who told me this personally instead of someone on the internet calling me stupid and cite this as true, or at least the story that he told me.