UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 7, 2018. Yekaterinburg Customs and Ural Customs officers and law-enforcement officials inspected a number of local stores to find out that a wholesale children’s products shop was selling pirated FIFA merchandise.

According to Yekaterinburg Customs’ press service, the shop was offering two kinds of Football. World Cup board games featuring a football trophy cup. Switzerland-based FIFA is the owner of this registered and protected trademark. It is against the law to make and sell goods with the logo without the trademark owner’s permission.

Police officers did the ‘test purchasing’ routine and inspected the shop’s warehouse, where a whole range of counterfeit produce was found (213 children’s board games featuring a FIFA football cup without a hologram to prove the product’s authenticity). The store director provided evidence of having purchased the games from another company, a wholesale supplier. However, no permission from the trademark owner to use the logo or to import trademark-bearing produce to Russia could be presented.

In the end, all the 213 board games made in China had to get seized. The case has been transferred to court, which will have to decide on what to do about the pirated goods.