KELLEY STEWART

Disqualified from

2020-06-08

Date of birth on record

May 1972

Ms Stewart caused or allowed GEN-X to trade with a lack of commercial probity in that between January 2013 at the latest and 20 January 2016 she caused or allowed GEN-X to purchase and supply computer hardware and peripherals which she knew or ought to have known were either counterfeit or were parallel imports (“Products”), both of which infringed the intellectual property rights of a multi-national technology conglomerate (“Complainant”) and were to its detriment: Infringement • The Complainant has established by reference to Products’ serial numbers that GEN-X purchased and sold 78,800 items from a linked company (“Linked Company”) of which 58,762 were represented to be Products manufactured or licensed by the Complainant when they were not (“Linked Products”). • The Complainant has seized some of the Linked Products which, when tested, all 116 items were found to be counterfeit (“Counterfeit Goods”). GEN-X purchased the Counterfeit Goods for £4,189 and sold them for £7,257. The Complainant’s recommended retail price, had the goods been genuine would have been at least US $110,495. • The Linked Products were purchased by the Linked Company from a supplier in China. • Additionally, GEN-X purchased and sold on Products represented as being those of the Complainant which it sourced directly from Chinese suppliers, which Products were not authorised by the Complainant for sale outside the permitted territory (“Chinese Supplies”). Knowledge • Ms Stewart was served with a notice by the Complainant warning her of trade mark infringements committed by GEN-X on 23 March 2007 and, on 18 May 2007, signed an undertaking on behalf of the directors, agents and employees of GEN-X and all other associated companies not to make, import, offer for sale or otherwise deal in any Counterfeit Products as defined in the Complainant’s letter of 23 March 2007, or any products which bear the Complainant’s trade mark or similar marks where products have not been manufactured by Complainant’s or a licensed Manufacturer. • The Complainant’s recommended retail price for a sample of 14,135 of the Linked Products in the UK was US$14,064,325. GEN-X purchased the Linked Products, of which there were 58,762, for £2,361,716. The Linked Products were described in the Linked Company’s sales invoices as “3rd Party… None (sic) Branded”; The Linked Products were recorded as branded products of the Complainant on GEN-X’s database and GEN-X’s purchase orders and sales invoices did not include the description “3rd Party… None (sic) Branded”; • The Linked Products were scanned using a barcode scanner to check whether the serial numbers were valid and in the Complainant’s database and whether or not the product’s on a support contract operated by the Complainant (brokers refer to a serial number without a Complainant’s support contract as a “clean Serial number”). Some serial numbers were duplicates (i.e. a genuine product bearing that serial number had already been transacted). • Goods purporting to be the Complainant’s products were stored at a separate location not at GEN-X’s trading premises. • In relation to the Chinese Supplies, GEN X’s purchase orders specified that, in relation to Products bearing the Complainant’s brand name, GEN X would not accept items sourced from the Far East, yet on those purchase orders the name and address of the relevant Chinese supplier is indicated.