A sign points to an official UGG store in Shanghai. Photo: IC

By Li Mao

Local authorities are working on tracking down the manufacturers responsible for producing more than 4,000 pairs of knockoff UGG boots with a market value of some 500,000 yuan ($74,300) that were earlier this year confiscated at Shanghai's Qipu Road.

The raid at one of the city's largest wholesale and retail markets came in March, after dozens of others crackdowns on fake UGG products at warehouses and private homes around the city this year, said Fang Gang, an officer with the Hongkou District Quality and Technical Supervision Bureau.

"We take action whenever we get leads about vendors selling phony brand name items," Fang told the Global Times Thursday. "Our efforts aimed at protecting the intellectual property rights of the brands in question."

Fang said that while the vendors will be punished and fined, he admitted that finding the manufacturers of the prod-ucts, is a much more difficult task.

"Most of the sellers only contact the manufacturers by phone," he said. "They don't actually know them, and so the vendors don't even know where to find them.

"The manufacturers are smart; they offer compensation to the sellers if they get caught and can't sell them all," he added.

According to a man surnamed Shi, from the Beijing-based Zhu Cheng Law Firm, who is UGG's agent in China, Shanghai should do more to crack down on the illegal activity.

"As many as 20 producers distributing fake UGGs have been found this year," he told the Global Times Thursday. "But because they don't face serious punishment, and never have to pay that large of a fine, many of them continue producing the fake products after they've been let off the hook."

Shi, however, admitted that Shanghai's attempts to crack down on UGG fakes fares better than those of Guangzhou, Zhenjiang and Wenzhou, where a greater number of knockoff UGG boots appear to surface.

Fang could not disclose the amount of fines the vendors would be given Thursday, but said that in previous cases, vendors caught selling knockoff merchandise were fined less than the amount of the market value of the goods in their possession.