SHANGHAI, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- A Shanghai court on Tuesday upheld the verdict for six people concerning counterfeiting and manufacturing 330 million yuan (about 50.5 million U.S. dollars) worth of LEGO toys.
The Shanghai Higher People's Court rejected the appeals of the group for the first-instance verdict. In the first-instance trial in September, the No. 3 intermediate people's court in Shanghai sentenced the chief culprit, surnamed Li, to six years in prison with a fine of 90 million yuan for copyright infringement.
Eight other defendants were given jail terms from three years to four years and six months and were also fined accordingly.
Of the nine, six filed appeals against the verdict after the first-instance trial.
The criminal gang, busted by local police in April 2019, was found guilty of replicating LEGO toys and selling them online and offline under the brand of Lepin without authorization from the Danish toy company LEGO since 2015.
The Lepin bricks were identified as replicas of authentic LEGO products by the Copyright Protection Center of China.
The case involved over 330 million yuan of illegal sales revenue from copyright infringement, the Shanghai Higher People's Court said. Enditem
