A counterfeit lawsuit recently ended with the winning party, L-Acoustics, taking a sledgehammer to thousands of dollars of fake equipment that was headed for recycling.
Coupled with a $5m USD fine, L-Acoustics was also ordered (nay, given the opportunity) to destroy the fake equipment in a bid they dubbed was “Making Our Industry Safer”. Se7ven Sounds Music is a hire company operating out of the US, and was found to be renting out counterfeit L-Acoustics equipment.
The counterfeit equipment has inferior quality connection for rigging massive sound arrays, as well as both active and passive speakers, potentially being unable to handle massive speaker loads or support the weight of subwoofer, racks and more extensive arrays.
The destruction event offered sound engineers sledgehammers to help destroy the equipment, as well as a crane for destruction of the larger and taller equipment, with 136 pieces in total being seized and then destroyed. This ruling comes after the December 2022 where counterfeit L-Acoustics products were found in China. Of the 2023 ruling, BJ Shaver, Director of Sales for the Americas at L-Acoustics said:
“This event allowed our partners whose businesses were impacted by this company representing counterfeit products as authentic L-Acoustics technologies to have fun while releasing some frustration,”
“Showing the industry that we are removing these fake products from the market helps to sustain the trust that our partners, production crews, audiences, and artists place in L-Acoustics.”
Read the full statement here.
