Oh no, it's Cerono

The IPKat's splendidly-named Mexican amigo Juan Manuel Alvarez Del Castillo Vargas has emailed him with the news, via the Mexican newspaper Reforma (7 June 2007), that the Mexican company Grupo Modelo (producers of the highly popular Corona Beer) have discovered that one million boxes of its product were sold last year in China under a lookalike brand and that nothing has been achieved in terms of stopping the damage. He writes:

"The Chinese Beijing Cerono Trade Limited Company produces and sells CERONO beer, using bottles, labels, logos, colors and graphics identical to those used by the Mexican beverage".

One million boxes equals 24 million bottles of beer. Juan adds, that's not a lot of beer for a population the size of China. - though it would be a huge amount for a country such as Mexico. The IPKat wonders what steps Grupo Modelo has actually taken to stem the tide of infringement, since it is becoming apparent that - while intellectual property infringement in China remains rampant - reports of successful enforcement of IP rights in the People's Republic are becoming too frequent to dismiss as mere accidents. Merpel wonders whether all those bottles of Cerono are bought by China's hitherto undiscovered population of migrant Mexicans, nostalgic for the joys of home.

More on Cerono/Corona here